Agriculture in the Middle Ages: Technology, Practice, and Representation

by Del Sweeney (Editor)

Overview

Explores the cultural framework within which changes in agricultural technology and economic organization occur and the ways in which changes in the social fabric influence attitudes toward rural work and the peasantry.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780812232820
Publisher:	University of Pennsylvania Press, Inc.
Publication date:	11/29/1995
Series:	Anniversary Collection
Pages:	416
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)
Lexile:	1420L (what's this?)
Age Range:	18 Years

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Figures
1. Introduction

PART I AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT AND DIFFUSION
2. Continuity and Discontinuity of Roman Agricultural Knowledge in the Early Middle Ages
3. The Development of Stockbreeding and Herding in Medieval Europe
4. Arab and European Agriculture in the Middle Ages: A Case of Restricted Diffusion
5. Ecology Versus Economics in Late Thirteenth- and Early Fourteenth-Century English Agriculture

PART II RURAL SOCIETY
6. Thunder and Hail over the Carolingian Countryside
7. Links Within the Village: Evidence from Fourteenth-Century Eastphalia
8. The Material Culture of the Peasantry in the Late Middle Ages: "Image" and "Reality"

PART III LITERARY REPRESENTATIONS
9. "A thing most brutish": The Image of the Rustic in Old French Literature
10. Rusticus: Folk-Hero of Thirteenth-Century Picard Drama
11. The "Hungry Gap," Crop Failure, and Famine: The Fourteenth-Century Agricultural Crisis and "Piers Plowman"

PART IV ARTISTIC REPRESENTATIONS
12. "When Adam Delved": Laboring on the Land in English Medieval Art
13. The New Image of Peasants in Thirteenth-Century French Stained Glass
14. In Due Season: Farm Work in the Medieval Calendar Tradition
15. Afterword

Editorial Reviews

From the two conferences, People of the Plough at Pennsylvania State University and The Image of the Rusticus at the University of British Columbia (no dates noted), 15 essays examine agricultural development and diffusion, rural society, and literary and artistic representations of farming in Europe from the Carolingian period through the late Middle Ages. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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