Old Age In Late Medieval England

This view of a society composed of the aged as well as of the young and the middle aged is reinforced by an examination of peers, bishops, and members of parliament and urban office holders, for whom demographic and career-length information exists. Many individuals had active careers until near the end of their lives; the aged were neither rarities nor outcasts within their world.

First full-length study of the notion and concept of old age in early medieval England.

Between 1200 and 1520 medieval English society went through a series of upheavals: this was an age of war, pestilence and rebellion. This book explores the realities of life of the people who lived through those stirring times. It looks in turn at aristocrats, peasants, townsmen, wage-earners and paupers, and examines how they obtained their incomes and how they spent them. This revised edition (1998) includes a substantial new concluding chapter and an updated bibliography.

The old speaker in Middle English literature often claims to be impaired because of age. This stunning admission is very often followed by actions and narration which directly contradict it, as speakers, such as the Reeve in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales or Amans in Gower's Confessio Amantis, proceed to perform even as they protest and claim impairments and debility. More than simply the modesty topos, this claim and contradiction exists, "Staves and Stanzas" argues, as prosthesis: old age brings with it debility and inability but discussing those age-related impairments both augments the old, impaired body, simultaneously undercutting and emphasizing the existence of bodily impairments. This language of prosthesis becomes a fitting metaphor for the old works these old speakers use to fashion narrative, which exist as incomplete yet powerful sources.

The late Middle Ages (c.1200-1500) was an age of transition. The major events of this period - the Black Death, the Hundred Years War, the rise of Parliament, the depositions of five English kings between 1327 and 1483 - are examined in detail in this book.

New approaches to the political culture of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, considering its complex relation to monarchy and state.

Innovations, transmissions and transformations had profound spatial, economic and social impacts on the environments, landscapes and habitats evident at micro- and macro-levels. This volume explores how these changes affected how land was worked, how it was organized, and the nature of buildings and rural complexes.

The social realities of old age have undergone profound changes since the middle ages. This study shows, however, that the images, attitudes and expectations of old people have changed for less. Shulamith Shahar shows how the status and social participation of the elderly varied according to gender, social stratum, economic resources, position, level of functioning, and personality, as well as according to regional custom. The book offers a broad cultural history of old age in medieval western Europe. Shahar examines the images, attitudes and advocated norms used in relation to the elderly and looks at the elderly in various social strata: churchmen and nuns, rulers, small office holders and soldiers, town dwellers and peasants. A valuable insight into life and society in the Middle Ages, this will prove an invaluable addition to history reading lists.

Originally published in 1981, The Later Middle Ages bridges the gap between modern and medieval language and literature, by introducing the social and intellectual milieu in which writers like Chaucer, Malory and Margery Kempe lived. It provides a unified and coherent account of the culture of late medieval England, and of the problems involved in viewing it, in relation to English literature. The book covers the history of ideas and education, art and architecture, and changes in the social, economic and political structure.