RobNY:
Aaah, too many good books to read. I’ve been looking, eyeing, so many.
The look we have on the Middle Ages really
is tainted by the history that has come after. I’ll just catalogue this book in the back of my mind and come back for it… sometime.
There are many, many great books out there.
Here are the Chapters and some quotes:
(1) “Middle Ages”
On the biased view of the Middle Ages…
“Teacher: What are the peasants of the Middle Ages called?
Class: They are caled serfs.
Teacher: And what did they do, what did they have?
Class: They were sick
Teacher: What illness Jerome?
Jerome (very serious): The plague.
Teacher: And what else, Emmanuel?
Emmanuel: Cholera
…(Teacher: ) You know your history very well… onto geography.”
“Do you have any transparencies… that give the idea of the Middle Ages in general: (you know) slaughter, massacres, scenes of violence, famines, epidemics”
(2) Clumsy and Awkward
“(The Middle Age libraries, monasteries contained classical texts, etc)… What was new (during the “Renaissance”) was the way classical inquiry was used… instead of seeing in it a treasure to be used (a treasure of wisdom, knowledge, artistic or literary process from which one could draw indefinitely)… people suddenly realized that ancient works could be considered as models to be imitated. The Ancients had achieved perfect works; they had attained beauty itself. So, the better one imitated their works, the more certain one would be of attaining beauty”
My comment: This is what partly led to the strong ethnocentrism of European culture during the Imperialist Age. If the highest and only really good culture, art, buildings, way of life, laws, and government was that of the Ancients. Then when the Europeans imitated all things classical, they were no longer “dwarfs on the shoulders of giants” (the Ancients), they became the giants by modeling the Ancients in all ways (including the treatment women by sidelining them to solely the home and stripping them of most rights).
(3) Crude and Ignorant
(4) Torpor and Barbarity
(5) Of Frogs and Men
(6) Women without Souls
(7) The Accusing Finger
(8) History, Ideas, and Fantasy
(9) Simple Remarks on the Teaching of History
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0898707811/104-7154138-1319923?v=glance
