Medieval Popular Culture (Cambridge Studies in Oral and Literate Culture) (Paperback)

~ Aron Gurevich (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Here Western readers are confronted with one of the great minds of medieval cultural history, grappling with fundamental issues of history in a provocative, timely, and demanding manner. Exciting, exasperating, and enlightening, it is a volume no medievalist can ignore." Patrick G. Geary, The Historian

Product Description

By scrutinizing the lives of saints, miracle stories, descriptions of fantastic travels, penitential literature, catechisms and similar genres, from the fifth to the 15th centuries, the author attempts to reconstruct the beliefs and perceptions of ordinary men and women in medieval times.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 295 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press (April 27, 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0521386586
• ISBN-13: 978-0521386586
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #610,383 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars exploration of medieval western popular culture, June 8, 2001

By	"mathilde_de_gardin" (Netherlands) - See all my reviews

Gurevich investigates the way medieval common people saw this world and the Other World. He uses written sources (penitentials, hagiography, exempla, catechisms and the like) to describe the "Weltanschauung" of the illiterati. In the process the reader gets a very lifely image of hell, purgatory, the Last Judgement, visiting demons, the use of saints, the roles of clergy in society. Important writers as Ceasarius of Heisterbach, Gregorius The Great, Honorius of Autun, Burchard of Worms and Dante are discussed.

But though Gurevich succeeds in painting a vivid image, I cannot give 5 points for this book. First of all, Gurevich makes his theories plausible, but the book lacks substantial evidence. Secondly non-Russian readers will find the style Gurevich uses indirect and repetetive, which makes this interesting book simply (and unnecessary) "hard work" to read.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A useful guide to folk belief., June 5, 2000

By	Robert L. welch (Baltimore, Md.) - See all my reviews

Gurevich' work is a valuable addition to the collection of anyone interested in popular belief in medieaval europe. This work is especially valuable from the standpoint of the literature of dissenting groups and heresies. The chapter on conceptions of the underworld before Dante's elucidation is both entertaining and enlightening.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars unique perspective on middle ages, October 1, 2007

By	S. Pactor "reader" (San Diego, CA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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This book was translated in 1988- from the original russian. The approach to "medieval popular culture" will be familiar to readers of foucault as the fashionable "inversion" technique, of focusing on "low" instead of "high". Gurevich's main, and repeated critique of better known midevialiests like Phillipe Aries and Marc Bloch (french midevialists' it should be said) is that they use sources derived from the intelligensia, rather then relying on analysis based on materials available to the common people.

Thus, their assumptions are based on representations made by elites based on the way things are supposed to be, rather then the way they are. Gurevich looks at hagiography (study of saints lives), midevial vision literature and pentitentials (books designed to instruct the peasants). In the end he presents a picture of midevial "culture" or "mentality" that is considerably more complex then the explanations provided by the annalists school at the university of paris. Gurevich is well grounded in both french and german sources- apparently read in the original? I was well aware of all of the french sources, but hadn't heard of ANY of the german authors- what's up with that???

Thought provoking with an excellent bibliography- and short- but written in a surely-awkward within the original- style that gets no easier to read for being translated into english.