In this book, now available in paperback, he examines the history of France from the rise of the Capetians in the mid-tenth century to the execution of Joan of Arc in the mid-fifteenth. He takes the evolution of power and the emergence of the French state as his central themes, and guides the reader through complex - and, in many respects, still unfamiliar, yet fascinating terrain. He describes the growth of the castle and the village, the building blocks of the new Western European civilization of the second millenium AD.

This book situates the medieval manuscript within its cultural contexts, with chapters by experts in bibliographical and theoretical approaches to manuscript study.

This book argues for a radically new approach to the history of reading and literacy in the Middle Ages.

Medieval French literature encompasses 450 years of literary output in Old and Middle French, mostly produced in Northern France and England. These texts, including courtly lyrics, prose and verse romances, dits amoureux and plays, proved hugely influential for other European literary traditions in the medieval period and beyond. This Companion offers a wide-ranging and stimulating guide to literature composed in medieval French from its beginnings in the ninth century until the Renaissance. The essays are grounded in detailed analysis of canonical texts and authors such as the Chanson de Roland, the Roman de la Rose, Villon's Testament, Chrétien de Troyes, Machaut, Christine de Pisan and the Tristan romances. Featuring a chronology and suggestions for further reading, this is the ideal companion for students and scholars in other fields wishing to discover the riches of the French medieval tradition.

From the end of the thirteenth century to the first decades of the sixteenth century, Guyart des Moulins’s Bible historiale was the predominant French translation of the Bible. Enhancing his translation with techniques borrowed from scholastic study, vernacular preaching, and secular fiction, Guyart produced one of the most popular, most widely copied French-language texts of the later Middle Ages. Making the Bible French investigates how Guyart’s first-person authorial voice narrates translation choices in terms of anticipated reader reactions and frames the biblical text as an object of dialogue with his readers. It examines the translator’s narrative strategies to aid readers’ visualization of biblical stories, to encourage their identification with its characters, and to practice patient, self-reflexive reading. Finally, it traces how the Bible historiale manuscript tradition adapts and individualizes the Bible for each new intended reader, defying modern print-based and text-centred ideas about the Bible, canonicity, and translation.

From the contents:00Part I: Allegorical Dream-Visions and Debate Poems Jonathan Morton, 'Friars in love: Manuscript illumination as literary commentary in three fourteenth-century manuscripts of the Roman de la rose' (Paris, BnF, MS .25526; Baltimore, Walters, MS W. 143;London, BL, MS Royal 19 B XIII) - Emma Cayley, ‘Entre deux sommes’: Imagining desire in the songe de la Pucelle' - HelenJ. Swi , 'Limits of representation in late fifteenth-century Burgundy: What the eye doesn’t hear and the ear doesn’t see'. 00Part II: 'Burgundian prose narratives' Dominique Lagorgette, 'Staging transgression rough text and image: Violence and nudity in the cent nouvelles nouvelles'(Glasgow, University Library, MS Hunter252, and Vérard 1486 and 1498) – Rebecca Dixon, 'The Roman de Buscalus; or, the artof not being French' – Rosalind Brown-Grant, 'Personal drama or chivalric spectacle? The reception of the Roman d’Olivier de Castille in the illuminations of the Wavrin aster and Loyset Liédet'00Part III: Reworkings of classical and Medieval auctores' J. Chimène Bateman, 'The hybrid art of the compiler: Text/Image relations in the Ovidemoralisé of Colard Mansion' – KathleenWilson-Chevalier, 'Proliferating narratives: Texts, images, and (Mostly Female) dedicatees in a few héroïdes productions' – Elizabeth L’Estrange, 'Re-Presenting Emilia in the context of the Querelle des femmes: Text and image in Anne de Graville’s Beau Roman list of manuscripts and early printed editions'