Plow, the Pen and the Sword
Subtitle: Images and Self-Images of Medieval People in the Low Countries
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group
Published: 2017
Language: eng
Number of pages: 343
ISBN-13: 9781472442109
Subjects: Middle ages, history
Description: "This book compares the cultures of the different social groups living in the Low Countries in the early Middle Ages. Clergy, nobility, peasants and townsmen greatly varied in their attitudes to labor, property, violence, and the handling and showing of emotions. Künzel explores how these social groups looked at themselves as a group, and how they looked at the other groups. Image and self-image could differ radically. The results of this research are specified and tested in four case studies on the interaction between group cultures, focusing respectively on the influence of oral and written traditions on a literary work, rituals as a means of conflict management in weakly centralized societies, stories as an expression of an urban group mentality, and beliefs on death and the afterlife"--Provided by publisher.