History and the Written Word: Documents, Literacy, and Language in the Age of the Angevins

A thought-provoking look at the Angevin aristocracy's literary practices and historical record

Coming upon the text of a document such as a charter or a letter inserted into the fabric of a medieval chronicle and quoted in full or at length, modern readers might well assume that the chronicler is simply doing what good historians have always done—that is, citing his source as evidence. Such documentary insertions are not ubiquitous in medieval historiography, however, and are in fact particu...