Suchergebnisse

Introduction. Ch. 1: Daughter and Identities. Ch. 2: Education and Apprenticeship. Ch. 3: Heiresses, Dowry, and Dower. Ch. 4: The Formation of Marriage. Ch. 5: Recovery of Dower and Widows' Remarriage. Ch. 6: For Better or For Worse: The Marital Experience. Ch. 7: The Standard of Living and Women as Consumers. Ch. 8: Women as Entrepreneurs. Ch. 9: Servants, Casual Labor, and Vendors. Conclusion. Appendix I. Glossary. Notes. Bibliography

Beginning with the merger of Roman, Christian, and Germanic cultures, this history of the Middle Ages covers a vast array of subjects including Byzantium and the Islamic world, feudalism, Church reform, architecture, the Crusades, courtly love, the Magna Carta, and the Hundred Years' War. Author Barbara A. Hanawalt uses a lively and anecdotal writing style to bring history alive for young readers. She delves into the telling details that young adults find fascinating such as the different kinds of armor and weapons used by knights on horseback and the terrifying spread of the Black Death through Europe in the 14th century. Lavishly illustrated with art, photographs, documents, artifacts, and maps, The Middle Ages also includes an index and suggestions for further reading.

The working women in this volume represent a wide diversity of stations in life, ranging from slaves and servants to respectable widows and professional midwives. Through a variety of sources including notarial records, wills, contracts, private account books, and city, manorial, and state court records, their work patterns come to life. The women studied lived in Page viii →Ragusa (Dubrovnik), Florence, Lyon and Montpellier, Exeter and rural England, Cologne, Leiden, and Nuremberg. With such a variety of work experiences, locations, and centuries separating their lives, a remarkable continuity of circumstances and options nevertheless emerges.

The use of the term "adolescence" for any period other than the late nineteenth or twentieth century has been much debated. Aries denied that the medieval period had a life phase that could be described with such a term; others have argued that the term carries a particular, very modern meaning even if Augustine did use the term adolescentia. This introduction to a collection of essays on the history of adolescence shows that the life stage was a well recognized and defined one through the Middle Ages and into the modern period. While the modern period did not invent adolescence, it did modify the definition. Constants in acolescence from the thirteenth through the twentieth century are the struggle between adults and youth over entry and exit from adolescence and for control during that period. But much changes over the centuries. Social scientific discussions that aid in our historical analysis are almost entirely based on the male rather than the female experience. While cultural change modifies the male definitions of adolescence, the medieval and twentieth-century definition of female adolescence stays closer to biological than social definitions of puberty.

We seem, as social science historians, to have become increasingly interested in the way that we present our evidence or tell our story or narrative. Donald McCloskey's address last year cajoled us, or perhaps exhorted us, not to separate the scientific from the humanistic approach to writing history. As he pointed out, metaphor even creeps into economics, which is, by its earliest accounts, a dismal science. Metaphor influences the way one argues even with numbers (McCloskey 1990). I share his interest in rhetoric and add an interest in narrative.