Barbara H. Rosenwein

We make sense of love with fantasies, stories that shape feelings that are otherwise too overwhelming, incoherent, and wayward to be tamed. For love is a complex, bewildering, and ecstatic emotion covering a welter of different feelings and moral judgements. Drawing on philosophy, fiction, art, letters, memoirs, and evidence from everyday life, historian Barbara H. Rosenwein explores five of our most enduring fantasies of love: Like-minded union, transcendent rapture, selfless giving, obsessive longing, and insatiable desire. Each has had a long and kaleidoscopic history with lasting effects on how we in the West think about love today. Yet each leads to a different conclusion about what we should strive for in our relationships. If only we could peel back the layers of love and discover its “true” essence. But love doesn't work like that; it is constructed on the shards of experience, story, and feeling, shared over time, intertwined with other fantasies. By understanding the history of how we have loved, Rosenwein argues, we may better navigate our own tumultuous experiences, and perhaps write our own scripts.

A History in Five Fantasies

Love

"Elegantly written and beautifully produced, this book is a treat for teachers and students alike. Rosenwein is a masterful storyteller; her book will inspire and delight." - Fiona Griffiths, New York University

A Short History of the Middle Ages

"This is a vision of medieval history for the twenty-first century." - Claudia Rapp, UCLA

Sources from Europe, Byzantium, and the Islamic World

Reading the Middle Ages

This highly original book is both a study of emotional discourse in the Early Middle Ages and a contribution to the debates among historians and social scientists about the nature of human emotions.

Emotional Communities in the Early Middle Ages

Tracing the story of anger from the Buddha to Twitter, Rosenwein provides a much-needed account of our changing and contradictory understandings of this emotion All of us think we know when we are angry, and we are sure we can recognize anger in others as well. But this is only superficially true. We see anger through lenses colored by what we know, experience, and learn. Barbara H. Rosenwein traces our many conflicting ideas about and expressions of anger, taking the story from the Buddha to our own time, from anger's complete rejection to its warm reception. Rosenwein explores how anger has been characterized by gender and race, why it has been tied to violence and how that is often a false connection, how it has figured among the seven deadly sins and yet is considered a virtue, and how its interpretation, once largely the preserve of philosophers and theologians, has been gradually handed over to scientists--with very mixed results. Rosenwein shows that the history of anger can help us grapple with it today.

The Conflicted History of an Emotion

Anger

In this newest edition of her bestselling book, Barbara H. Rosenwein integrates the history of European, Byzantine, and Islamic medieval cultures--as well as their Eurasian connections--in a dynamic narrative. The text has been significantly updated to reflect growing interest in the Islamic world and Mediterranean region. Stunning plates featuring art and architecture weave together events, mentalities, and aesthetics. Medievalist Riccardo Cristiani authors a new feature on material culture that examines the intricacies of manuscript production and the lustrous glazes of Islamic ceramics. A fully revised map program offers user-friendly spot maps that clarify events right where they are discussed as well as dazzling topographical maps that reveal the very contours of the medieval world. Helpful genealogies, figures, architectural plans, and lists of key dates complement the text. All maps, genealogies, and figures are available on the History Matters website (www.utphistorymatters.com) for easy download. Students will find this site equally useful for its hundreds of study questions and their click-to-reveal answers.

A Short History of the Middle Ages, Fifth Edition

Why did early medieval kings declare certain properties to be immune from the judicial and fiscal encroachments of their own agents? Did weakness compel them to prohibit their agents from entering these properties, as historians have traditionally believed? In a richly detailed book that will be greeted as a landmark addition to the literature on the Middle Ages, Barbara H. Rosenwein argues that immunities were markers of power. By placing restraints on themselves and their agents, kings demonstrated their authority, affirmed their status, and manipulated the boundaries of sacred space.Rosenwein transforms our understanding of an institution central to the political and social dynamics of medieval Europe. She reveals how immunities were used by kings and other leaders to forge alliances with the noble families and monastic centers that were central to their power. Generally viewed as unchanging juridical instruments, immunities as they appear here are as fluid and diverse as the disparate social and political conflicts that they at once embody and seek to defuse. Their legacy reverberates in the modern world, where liberal institutions, with their emphasis on state restraint, clash with others that encourage governmental intrusion. The protections against unreasonable searches and seizures provided by English common law and the U.S. Constitution developed in part out of the medieval experience of immunities and the institutions that were elaborated to breach them.

Power, Restraint, and Privileges of Immunity in Early Medieval Europe

Negotiating Space

This is an examination of how and why medieval kings declared certain properties immune from their own power. The author argues that they were not compelled by weakness, but rather by a need to show strength and reaffirm status and exercise authority, and that we need a new understanding of the political and social exchanges of the period. The declaration of immunities were really instruments used by kings and bishops to forge alliances with the noble families and monastic centres which were the essence of their authority.

In this newest edition of her bestselling book, Barbara H. Rosenwein integrates the history of European, Byzantine, and Islamic medieval cultures--as well as their Eurasian connections--in a dynamic narrative. This volume spans the period c.900 to c.1500. The text has been significantly updated to reflect growing interest in the Islamic world and Mediterranean region. Stunning plates featuring art and architecture weave together events, mentalities, and aesthetics. Medievalist Riccardo Cristiani authors a new feature on material culture that examines the intricacies of manuscript production and the lustrous glazes of Islamic ceramics. A fully revised map program offers user-friendly spot maps that clarify events right where they are discussed as well as dazzling topographical maps that reveal the very contours of the medieval world. Helpful genealogies, figures, architectural plans, and lists of key dates complement the text. All maps, genealogies, and figures are available on the History Matters website (www.utphistorymatters.com) for easy download. Students will find this site equally useful for its hundreds of study questions and their click-to-reveal answers.

From c.900 to c.1500, Fifth Edition

A Short History of the Middle Ages, Volume II

Lester K. Little

Sharon A. Farmer

A new generation of historians today is borrowing from cultural anthropology, post-modern critical theory, and gender studies to understand the social meanings of medieval religious movements, practices, figures, and cults. In this volume Sharon Farmer and Barbara H. Rosenwein bring together essays--all hitherto unpublished--that combine some of the best of these new approaches with rigorous research and traditional scholarship. Some of these essays re-envision the professionals of religion: the monks and nuns who carried out crucial social functions as mediators between living and dead, repositories for social memory, and loci of vicarious piety. In their religious life these people embodied an image of the society that produced them. Other contributions focus on social categories, usually expressed as dichotomies: male/female, insider/outsider, saint/outcast. Monks and Nuns, Saints and Outcasts is the first book to show the interaction of seemingly antithetical groups of medieval people and the ways in which they were defined by, as well as against, each other. All of the essays, taken together, form a tribute to Lester K. Little, pioneer in the study of religion in medieval society.

Religion in Medieval Society : Essays in Honor of Lester K. Little

Monks & Nuns, Saints & Outcasts

Lynn Hunt

Thomas R. Martin

Bonnie G. Smith

With a superior chronological organization, The Making of the West tells the story of the cross-cultural, global exchanges that have shaped western history. This two-color Value Edition includes the unabridged narrative and select maps and images from the comprehensive text. LaunchPad also features all of the contents of the comprehensive edition in full color, including primary source features and summative quizzing in each chapter, numerous supplement options, and a free companion sourcebook. With LaunchPad, the Value Edition is an excellent resource at an outstanding price. Available for free when packaged with the print book, the popular digital assignment and assessment options for this text bring skill building and assessment to a highly effective level. The active learning options come in LaunchPad which combines an accessible e-book with LearningCurve, an adaptive and automatically graded learning tool that—when assigned—helps ensure students read the book; the complete companion reader with comparative questions that help students build arguments from those sources; and many other study and assessment tools. For instructors who want the easiest and most affordable way to ensure students come to class prepared Achieve Read & Practice pairs LearningCurve, adaptive quizzing and our mobile, accessible Value Edition e-book, in one easy-to-use product.

Peoples and Cultures

The Making of the West, Value Edition, Volume 1

The third edition of Reading the Middle Ages retains the strengths of previous editions—thematic and geographical diversity, clear and informative introductions, and close integration with A Short History of the Middle Ages—and adds significant new materials, especially on the Byzantine and Islamic worlds and the Mediterranean region. This volume spans the period c.300 to c.1150. The stunning "Reading through Looking" color insert, which showcases medieval artifacts, has been expanded to include essays on weapons and warfare by medievalist Riccardo Cristiani. New maps, timelines, and genealogies aid readers in following knotty but revealing sources. On the History Matters website (www.utphistorymatters.com), students have access to hundreds of Questions for Reflection.

From c.300 to c.1150

Reading the Middle Ages Volume I

Elina Gertsman

The extraordinary array of images included in this volume reveals the full and rich history of the Middle Ages. Exploring material objects from the European, Byzantine and Islamic worlds, the book casts a new light on the cultures that formed them, each culture illuminated by its treasures. The objects are divided among four topics: The Holy and the Faithful; The Sinful and the Spectral; Daily Life and Its Fictions, and Death and Its Aftermath. Each section is organized chronologically, and every object is accompanied by a penetrating essay that focuses on its visual and cultural significance within the wider context in which the object was made and used. Spot maps add yet another way to visualize and consider the significance of the objects and the history that they reveal. Lavishly illustrated, this is an appealing and original guide to the cultural history of the Middle Ages.

The Middle Ages in 50 Objects

Spanning the period from c.900 to c.1500 and containing primary source material from the European, Byzantine, and Islamic worlds, Barbara H. Rosenwein's Reading the Middle Ages, Second Edition once again brings the Middle Ages to life. Building on the strengths of the first edition, this volume contains 24 new readings, including 10 translations commissioned especially for this book, and a stunning new 10-plate color insert entitled "Containing the Holy" that brings together materials from the Western, Byzantine, and Islamic religious traditions. Ancillary materials, including study questions, can be found on the History Matters website (www.utphistorymatters.com).

Sources from Europe, Byzantium, and the Islamic World, c.900 to c.1500, Second Edition

Reading the Middle Ages, Volume II

This extraordinary selection of objects from the European, Byzantine and Islamic worlds illuminates the rich cultures of medieval history.

This book considers the role of anger in the social lives and conceptual universes of a varied and significant cross-section of medieval people: monks, saints, kings, lords, and peasants.

The Social Uses of an Emotion in the Middle Ages

Anger's Past

In the tenth century the great monastery at Cluny rose as a bulwark in the midst of social chaos. Within its walls emerged a model of restraint: the "rhinoceros bound." The author show how the instability of everyday life was replaced at Cluny with an interpretation of the Benedictine rule that stressed ritual, order, and lawfulness.

Cluny in the Tenth Century

Rhinoceros Bound

Tracing the story of anger from the Buddha to Twitter, Rosenwein provides a much-needed account of our changing and contradictory understandings of this emotionAll of us think we know when we are angry, and we are sure we can recognize anger in others as well. But this is only superficially true. We see anger through lenses colored by what we know, experience, and learn.Barbara H. Rosenwein traces our many conflicting ideas about and expressions of anger, taking the story from the Buddha to our own time, from anger’s complete rejection to its warm reception. Rosenwein explores how anger has been characterized by gender and race, why it has been tied to violence and how that is often a false connection, how it has figured among the seven deadly sins and yet is considered a virtue, and how its interpretation, once largely the preserve of philosophers and theologians, has been gradually handed over to scientists—with very mixed results. Rosenwein shows that the history of anger can help us grapple with it today.

Barbara H. Rosenwein

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