Time, Work, and Culture in the Middle Ages

Front Cover
University of Chicago Press, 1980 - History - 384 pages
"When I studied these manuals, a source then little exploited, I noticed that the academic, like the merchant, was justified by reference to the labor he accomplished. The novelty of the academics thus ultimately appeared to lie in their role as intellectual workers. My attention was therefore drawn to two notions whose ideological avatars I attempted to trace through the concrete social conditions in which they developed. These notions were labor and time. Under these two heads I maintain two open files, from which some of the articles collected here are drawn. I am still persuaded that attitudes toward work and time are essential aspects of social structure and function, and that the study of such attitudes offers a useful tool for the historian who wishes to examine the societies in which they develop."--Preface, page xii

From inside the book

Contents

The Several Middle Ages of Jules Michelet
3
Merchants Time and Churchs Time in the Middle Ages 20
29
A Note on Tripartite Society Monarchical Ideology
53
Labor Techniques and Craftsmen in the Value Systems
71
Peasants and the Rural World in the Literature of
87
Academic Expenses at Padua in the Fifteenth Century
101
Trades and Professions as Represented in Medieval
107
the Medieval University Conceive of Itself
122
The Universities and the Public Authorities in
135
Clerical Culture and Folklore Traditions in Merovingian
153
Dreams in the Culture and Collective Psychology of
201
The Historian and the Ordinary Man
225
The Symbolic Ritual of Vassalage
237
Notes Bibliographies and Appendixes
289
Index
368
Copyright

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About the author (1980)

Jacques Le Goff (1927-2014) was a prominent French historian and medievalist. He was a key proponent of the Annales school of historical analysis, which emphasizes longterm social history over political or military themes. He argued that the Middle Ages were a distinct form of civilization, substantively different from both the classsical and modern worlds. Arthur Goldhammer is the translator for numerous books including Neoconservatism: The Biography of a Movement, Algerian Chronicles, The Society of Equals, and Capital in the Twenty-First Century. He received the French-American Translation Prize in 1990 for his translation of A Critical Dictionary of the French Revolution.

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