Ceremony and Civility - Civic Culture in Late Medieval London

In Ceremony and Civility, Barbara Hanawalt shows how London's elected officials and elites in the late Middle Ages used ceremony and ritual to establish their legitimacy and power. In a largely immigrant population, the official appearances helped instruct the newly arrived about the power structure of the city, as did humiliating, public parades of offenders of laws through the streets.

About the author

Barbara A. Hanawalt is King George III Professor of British History Emerita, Ohio State University. Her books include The Ties That Bound: Peasant Families in Medieval England (1986); Growing Up in Medieval London: The Experience of Childhood in History (1993); Of Good and Ill Repute: Gender and Social Control in Medieval England (1999); and The Wealth of Wives: Women, Law, and the Economy in Late Medieval London (2007).

Summary

In Ceremony and Civility, Barbara Hanawalt shows how London's elected officials and elites in the late Middle Ages used ceremony and ritual to establish their legitimacy and power. In a largely immigrant population, the official appearances helped instruct the newly arrived about the power structure of the city, as did humiliating, public parades of offenders of laws through the streets.

Additional text

Barbara Hanawalt's book is an excellent synthesis on London, exposing vividly nearly every aspect of urban life from the Guildhall to the ill-famed taverns. Her approach of the importance of the didactic nature of the ceremonies and rituals concerning the values and the power of the oligarchy is also very stimulating. Besides, it is well written and accessible to students and even a larger public, all the more so that it contains a glossary and an index of the notions, institutions and so on, explained in the book... This 'final book' of a fine historian is a great one and largely deserves to be read if one wants to understand the life of the most important city of late medieval England.

Product details

• Authors: Barbara Hanawalt, Barbara A. Hanawalt, Barbara A. (King George III Professor of Hanawalt, Hanawalt Barbara A.
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 30.09.2017
• EAN: 9780190490393
• ISBN: 978-0-19-049039-3
• No. of pages: 248
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > History > General, dictionaries; Geschichte, HISTORY / Social History, Social & cultural history, HISTORY / Europe / Western, History - General History, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Customs & Traditions, HISTORY / Europe / Great Britain / Norman Conquest to Late Medieval (1066-1485), Medieval History, British & Irish history, c 1000 CE to c 1500, Social and cultural history, c 500 to c 1000 CE, European history: medieval period, middle ages, HISTORY / Europe / Medieval