Discussion of display through a range of artefacts and in a variety of contexts: family and lineage, social distinction and aspiration, ceremony and social bonding, and the expression of power and authority. Medieval culture was intensely visual. Although this has long been recognised by art historians and by enthusiasts for particular media, there has been little attempt to study social display as a subject in its own right. And yet, display takes us directly into the values, aspirations and, indeed, anxieties of past societies. In this illustrated volume a group of experts address a series of interrelated themes around the issue of display and do so in a waywhich avoids jargon and overly technical language. Among the themes are family and lineage, social distinction and aspiration, ceremony and social bonding, and the expression of power and authority. The media include monumental effigies, brasses, stained glass, rolls of arms, manuscripts, jewels, plate, seals and coins. Contributors: MAURICE KEEN, DAVID CROUCH, PETER COSS, CAROLINE SHENTON, ADRIAN AILES, FRÉDÉRIQUE LACHAUD, MARIAN CAMPBELL, BRIAN and MOIRA GITTOS, NIGEL SAUL, FIONN PILBROW, CAROLINE BARRON and JOHN WATTS.

Gives insight into the colorful and sumptuous way of life of medieval royalty and nobility, as seen in the pageantry of illuminated manuscripts and paintings of the 13th to 16th centuries

Medieval English Drama provides a fresh introduction to the dramatic and festive practices of England in the late Middle Ages. The book places particular emphasis on the importance of the performance contexts of these events, bringing to life a period before permanent theatre buildings when performances took place in a wide variety of locations and had to fight to attract and maintain the attention of an audience. Showing the interplay between dramatic and everyday life, the book covers performances in convents, churches, parishes, street processions and parades, and in particular distinguishes between modes of outdoor and indoor performance. Katie Normington aids the reader to a fuller understanding of these early English dramatic practices by explaining the significance of the place of performance, the particularities of spectatorship for each event and how the conventions of the form of drama were manipulated to address its reception. Audiences considered range from cloistered members, congregations and parish members to urban citizens, nobles and royalty. Undergraduate students of literature of this period will find this an approachable and illuminating guide.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1954.

Discusses pageantry as a means of instruction and entertainment and contains five historical pageants.

A SUNDAY TIMES HISTORY BOOK OF THE YEAR 'A triumph' Guardian 'Glorious ... makes the past at once familiar, exotic and thrilling.' Dominic Sandbrook 'A brilliant book' Mail on Sunday Just like us, medieval men and women worried about growing old, got blisters and indigestion, fell in love and had children. And yet their lives were full of miraculous and richly metaphorical experiences radically different to our own, unfolding in a world where deadly wounds might be healed overnight by divine intervention, or the heart of a king, plucked from his corpse, could be held aloft as a powerful symbol of political rule. In this richly-illustrated and unusual history, Jack Hartnell uncovers the fascinating ways in which people thought about, explored and experienced their physical selves in the Middle Ages, from Constantinople to Cairo and Canterbury. Unfolding like a medieval pageant, and filled with saints, soldiers, caliphs, queens, monks and monstrous beasts, it throws light on the medieval body from head to toe - revealing the surprisingly sophisticated medical knowledge of the time in the process. Bringing together medicine, art, music, politics, philosophy and social history, there is no better guide to what life was really like for the men and women who lived and died in the Middle Ages. Medieval Bodies is published in association with Wellcome Collection.