Categories of Medieval Culture [Hardcover]

A. J. Gurevich (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English, Russian (translation)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 356 pages
• Publisher: Routledge Kegan & Paul; 1st Ed. (U.K.) edition (February 1985)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0710095783
• ISBN-13: 978-0710095787
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.6 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,102,654 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Highly recommended, May 28, 2002

By 

Michael S. Mcintyre (Eagle, NE United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Categories of Medieval Culture (Hardcover)

This book is out of print, unfortunately, but is well worth taking the time and trouble to find on the used market. The accolade of 'genius' is tossed out rather easily nowadays, but I agree with the first reviewer: on the evidence of this book, at least, Gurevich is a genius.

His pedagogical method is built upon an extended discussion of what he call 'categories'. He explains his approach in the book's introduction:

"Evidently, in order to understand the life, the behaviour and the culture of medieval people, it is important to try to reconstruct their ways of thinking and their system of values. We have to try to discern their 'habits of mind', the ways in which they evaluated the world that surrounded them... In my opinion, it is best to try first of all to identify the basic universal categories of a culture, those without which it cannot exist and by which it is permeated in all its manifestations. These categories are then, at the same time, the defining categories of human consciousness in that culture. By this I mean such concepts and perceptual forms as time, space, change, cause, fate, number, the relationship of the perceptible to the supersensible, the relationship of the part to the whole. This list could be extended, developed and refined. But that is not the point. The point is that in any culture these universal concepts are mutually interrelated to form a 'world model' sui generis, a 'network of coordinates' through which the bearers of this culture perceive reality and construct their mental image of the world."

In my view (and I, unlike the first reviewer, am not a medievalist), Gurevich succeeds spectacularly with this approach -- he really does allow a modern reader to imagine apprehending the world in a way that approximates how a person in the Middle Ages must have done so. I would submit that this is no small feat. As the book makes clear, the culture of the Middle Ages, and ours, are in many ways alien to each other. Perhaps nowhere is the contrast between the cultures more evident than when Gurevich discusses the categories of time and space. His writing in these sections, although occasionally repetitive, is a dazzling display of originality and virtuosity. It defies a capsule summary, but the following brief excerpt may impart some of the flavor of what the author has to offer:

"Having acquired the means of measuring time accurately and, consequently, of reckoning it in equal intervals, the Europeans were bound sooner or later to grasp and apply the radical possibilities inherent therein -- changes prepared by the whole development of society, especially of the towns. Time was at last 'stretched out' in a straight line, proceeding from the past to the future through a point called the present. In preceding epochs the distinctions between past, present and future time had been relative, with no fixed boundaries separating them. (In religious ritual, at the supreme moment of consummation, past and future coalesced in the present to become the non-ephemeral, fulfilling the higher meaning of that moment.) With the triumph of linear time the boundaries became completely clear, and present time 'shrank' to a point continually moving vectorially from the past towards the future, thereby turning the future into the past. Present time became transient, irreversible and elusive. For the first time in his history man came up against the realisation that time, whose course he had been aware of only when something remarkable was happening, did not cease to flow when nothing was happening. So time had to be saved, used prudently, filled with activities useful to man. The regular chimes from the turret of the town hall were a constant reminder that time waits for no man, and a summons to use it profitably, to give it positive content."

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars categories of medieval culture, November 10, 2001

By 

Yelena Matusevich (Fairbanks, AK United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Categories of Medieval Culture (Hardcover)

I am a medievalist and I firmly believe that this is the best introduction to medieval studies. It is very comprehensive, imaginative, creative and absolutely original. It is a fantastic book, the work of genius I consult over and over again. It has nothing in common with boring, dry scholarly books that we are taught to write in graduate school. It has an advantage to present a total view, synthetic rather than analytical. Gurevich is a different type of scholar, not a Western one, so one should be patient with him because his methods of thinking are so different from linear thinking of European academic writing. Open your mind, read Gurevich!