Customer Reviews

Medieval Civilization 400 - 1500

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1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is perhaps the most important and influential book on the Middle Ages on the market right now. Written clearly in the good traditions of the Annales school, it is more of a sociological study into the society of the Middle ages. So, if you want the usual narrative about what happened when, then perhaps this is not the book for you. However, as an insight into the culture, social organization and general life throughout the Middle Ages, this is by far the best book one could find. I thought it was very well complemented by "Mediaeval Callings", a book edited by Jacques Le Goff.

Medieval Civilization is not an introductory history of the Middle Ages. The author assumes prior knowledge of many details. For those of us who are not up-to-speed, frequent use of an online encyclopedia is a must. Ever hear of the "Chanson de Geste"? How about the "Carolingian dynasty"? Le Goff doesn't tell you what these actually are -- but Wikipedia does.

If you already have a grounding in medieval history, or if you are willing to go the extra mile, Le Goff's work is engaging and quite readable. The author does not proceed chronologically, but rather sweeps up and down the time period, highlighting important trends and big-picture concepts. It is in this erudite generalization that the real strength of the work emerges. For example, Le Goff observes that in medieval epistemology, to understand something was to name it. The symbol itself was the essence of an object or the mechanics of a process. Thus, grammar and language were the most studied of all subjects, the most fundamental tools for knowing creation.

By making chronology subservient to theme, Le Goff is able to provide an illuminating snapshot of the Middle Ages as a whole. The downside of doing this is that the reader is left with more of a gestalt comprehension rather than a precisely located sense of time and place. That the downside is only minor is a testament to the interest and appeal of Le Goff's ideas.

If you've ever toiled through a Ferdinand Braudel tome you have an idea of what reading Le Goff is like - so badly structured that you think every page is a non-sequiter - but each of those pages is filled with incredible insight and gems of information. If it wasn't for what I call 'the Curse of European Academic Writing' (don't blame the translator - they're all this bad in their native languages) I'd have given this book five stars. But despite the difficult writing style, if you are interested in the medieval mind and the civilization that grew from it, this book is more than worth your time and effort.

Le Goff takes the reader across that incredable gulf that separates the worldviews of our time and medieval europe. One of the great barriers to understanding medieval europe is that their worldview, or core memes, were so foreign from our's that the actions of kings and peasants appear irrational. Le Goff explains the dark and pessimistic, though still extremely dynamic, thought of the age with precision and empathy.

Le Goff works through the transition from the classical world of Rome and Germanic/Celtic tribalism. He makes heavy use of symbolism of the age to illuminate the transition of thinking, conceptual models and institutions.

The biggest drawback of this book is that the reader has to have a base of knowledge of the region and the period. Le Goff provides very little background but jumps right into the heart of times. If you want to really learn about the medieval age, not just knights and kings, you should definantly read this book -- but this aint no beach reading.

My wife and I read through this text together during a somewhat lengthy trip to Paris back in 2004. Knowing that LeGoff is both a prodigious writer and well-esteemed scholar of the period, we selected the book in spite of reservations of tackling a text translated from French to English. We were so pleased that we did. LeGoff's narrative, even with the translation, reads smoothly and meaningfully, and one has the feeling of being immersed into a medieval world with every page.

As other reviewers have pointed out, there is certainly a difference in the writing style of Europeans and Americans. European writing, and particularly French (and perhaps, Dutch, as well) can often produce exceptionally long, and seemingly divergent, sentences that can seem to twist the limits of comprehension. This, of course, is simply because the typical American is not used to such verbal discourse; Americans generally speak in short, didactic, and punctuated sentences. When an American with no previous background in lexical differences produced by continental Europeans comes across translated works possessing such characteristics, there can be a tendency, however innocent, to be critical of such works, regardless of the parochial nature displayed by such knee-jerk criticisms - and yet, over time, these limitations can be overcome and eventually be valued as a different type of communication form holding intricacies and multi-faceted expositions in classical narrative style. Yes, if you can follow that sentence, that's what it can be like. But LeGoff's work is simply a masterpiece of scholarship which I can truly say (in spite of the ironic sense of contradiction) is truly fascinating and enjoyable to read.

LeGoff's work is truly immersive in nature. One does not get the sense that we are reading ABOUT medieval Europe, but rather that we are reading IN medieval Europe. Large portions of the book diverge from typical factual expositions of the period and explicate the sensory world of the period, including medieval thought, beliefs, and worldview. We also witness the growth of the medieval church, and the church's connection with emergent governments as the nation-states of Europe (France and Germany in particular) begin to take nascent form after the Treaty of Verdun in 843AD. This is a story too complex and variegated in detail to be completely covered in so short a text, but LeGoff does a masterful job of informing us of the particulars to support the narrative of the work. We are also introduced to the notion of "work" as a medieval construct, and how the commoner lived his life to support himself and his family. Feudalism, of course, plays a central role in any such story, in spite of the protests concerning use of the term, and so we are introduced to most every major theme present in the period.

In summary, LeGoff's work is a standard read for medieval history, and should not be overlooked even when more recent works have been released on the same subject. (And to see the immense amount of work LeGoff has put into other works on the same period, simply do a search in Amazon on his name, or click the link for his name directly under the title of this book at the top of the page.) Highly recommended.

First, I must admit that I am not an expert, at all, on the history of this period in Europe. I did find the information in this book to be very interesting and insightful. I feel that I learned a lot about continental European history during the dark ages and leading into the renaissance. The author obviously knows his subject well, and has done volumes of research.

My main problem with this book that others reviewers have also identified is the format. It is choppy and jumps from one topic to the next without much, if any, transition. Therefore, the overall story that the author is trying to tell is somewhat difficult to follow.

My other issue with the book is that I think the author has an anti-Church bias that comes through in his writing. I would be the first to agree that the Church made some greviuos errors during this period, but I felt like the author criticizes from a modern perspective instead of trying to figure out what was going on that may have caused the Church, and more specifically its leader, to act in certain ways.

Overall, this book is worth the read in order to gain greater perspective on what life was like during the Middle Ages. If nothing else, it helps readers like myself to appreciate the freedoms and comforts that we enjoy nowadays that would have been unheard of during this time period.

The book is a little old; it was first written by De Goff in 1964, and reprinted in an English translation by in 1988 by Blackwell. Since that time, it has been reissued by Barnes Nobel (2000.) The material obviously stands the test of time.

The author gives a tremendous overview of Continental Europe's medieval experience from 400-1500 AD, covering a wide range of material. It's sort of a crash course or lengthy "Cliff's Notes" on the topic. Certainly anyone writing papers that require a general understanding of the period will welcome this work, since it does not labor greatly over details, presenting instead information about the broader issues and events of life in the medieval world. Anyone interested in understanding later historical periods may well find this background material a God send for this same reason.

The only negative with respect to the book is the more haphazard discussion of culture in its second half. While chronology alone seems to give the military, historical, and political events a sense of order, when it discusses various aspects of culture and its evolution, it tends to get a little vague. The period covered is some 1100 years in length, and one suspects a great deal changed during that time, even if it didn't change quite as rapidly as it does now. I felt that an entire book of another 300 pages could easily be written on this aspect of European civilization alone.

I'm not an expert. In fact, this book acts as the foundation for my understanding of Medieval civilization. Nothing I have found anywhere else in history or in current observations of the human condition has substantially refuted the findings of this book. It does bounce around a little and does require Google for a lot of the places and names that you are assumed to already know. That makes it a slow book to read for the layman but it is what I wish every history book was. Far better than just trudging through the stories of the leaders and elites in chronological order, it delves a lot deeper and the analysis, at least to me, is always honest.

I happened to see this text in the publishers store new in hard cover. It is an English translation (Barnes & Noble, 2000) from the French (La civilization de l'Occident medieval by B. Arthaud, Paris, 1964; English translation by Basil Blackwell, Ltd., 1988)with an updated bibliography. It is a good survey of the period and allows for insight into modern history of the West. I obtained it to have on hand for not only myself, but the grandchildren who may be exposed to more "revisionist history." The price was great in store at $12.98 when it was originally published at nearly three times the price.

I attempted to read the English version. I found the style of the writing made it very difficult to follow. I am a patent attorney, so I am accustomed to reading cryptic and hard-to-follow writings. I stopped reading this one after 36 pages.