Product Description

The priorities of medieval chroniclers and historians were not those of the modern historian, nor was the way that they gathered, arranged and presented evidence. Yet if we understand how approached their task, and their assumption of God's immanence in the world, much that they wrote becomes clear. Many of them were men of high intelligence whose interpretation of events sheds clear light on what happened. Christopher Given-Wilson is the leading authority on medieval English historical writing. He examines how medieval writers such as William of Malmesbury and Adam of Usk treated chronology and geography, politics and warfare, heroes and villains. He also shows how the writing of history changed in the three hundred years between 1250 and 1550.

Telling the truth; Godwitness testimony; memory and usefulness; genealogy and institutional history; the deeds of warriors; time and place; language, form and identity; English history in the late Middle Ages.

From the Author

Chronicles is an analysis of the mental processes which went into the writing of history in the later middle ages. The main topics covered are the ways in which chroniclers gathered and evaluated evidence, including supernatural evidence. It looks at their attitude towards the preservation of evidence; their attitude towards, and use of, chronological and geographical information; how they depicted major themes such as politics and warfare; the ways in which they chose to present their work, in terms of language, form and structure; the extent to which the writing of history became a more individualistic process in the later middle ages; the rise of official history, with an investigation of the reasons why there was no real tradition of official history in England. The book ends with an analysis of the main themes in late medieval English historiography between the mid-thirteenth and mid-fifteenth centuries. Although focused on England, comparative material from other parts of western Europe such as France, Iberia and the Low Countries is frequently introduced