Customer Reviews

Life in Medieval Times

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...this item, as well as the companion DVD "Life in Anglo-Saxon Times" is a low-budget effort with rather poor sound and fairly meagre atmosphere.

What it is, is this: a small number of academics discuss life in the relevant times (in one section it is quite difficult to understand because of sound reverberation problems).

There are also scenes from an actual working village of Anglo-Saxon times (which does double-duty as the village in Medieval times, sometimes the exact same footage with the film flipped left-to-right; low budget in the extreme). This village was apparently constructed to show kids how their ancestors lived.

While some interesting points are explained, the whole effort has such a cheap video quality (with titles and explanatory introduction "written" letter by letter across the scene like something out of the 70's) that it really does not convey any atmosphere.

Is it worth the money? Hmmm. At the current price, no, not unless you are a diehard history fan and even then, the fact that the same village is used for two distinct periods of time (pre-Norman invasion and post) rather strains the historical credibility, though some of the speakers are good.

Probably should avoid this one.

I enjoyed this DVD. It is well researched and well written. It covers the period between 1066 (beginning of the Norman Invasion) and 1485 (End of the Wars of the Roses). And although the DVD is called "Life in Medieval times" it should be called life in Medieval England -although the two are nowadays close to synonomous.
Now, this is a lot of territory to cover but the DVD covers it well and accurately, we get an overview of many different facets of society and how they changed.

Examples:
-Overall society changes:How society was changed from a strictly agrarian and feudal society to set the stage for the Renaissance
-Changes in education and trade: What kind of work people did for a living, How tradesmen formed guilds, How the guilds rose into power, how education changed to something more than just the realm of the Church
-How various strata of people lived: from royalty moving from palace to palace to the lowly serfs tending the land
-How the legal systems changed to settle disputes; mostly over land
-The rise of knighthood:Scutage, training, bloodlines and more
-The effect of the black plague on society
-Major written works including the Magna Carta and the Doomsday book

This was a period of a few centuries where life was totally transformed and the dvd covers it well. I wouldn't say that the production values were high. But they do use actors to reenact and show us various ways of life. And it is peppered with a good amount of authentic paintings, pictures etc. But as far as the content inside the dvd it is good quality and accurate. You get an excellent overview of what life was like in medieval times - from peasant to king.