Abstract
Remembering the past in the Middle Ages is a subject that is usually perceived as a study of chronicles and annals written by monks in monasteries. Following in the footsteps of early Christian historians like Eusebius (d. 339) and St Augustine (d. 430), the medieval chroniclers are thought of as men isolated in their monastic institutions writing in Latin about the world around them. As the sole members of their society versed in literacy, they had a monopoly on the knowledge of the past as preserved in learned histories, which they themselves updated and continued. A self-perpetuating cycle of monks writing chronicles, which were read, updated and continued by the next generation, began in the sixth and seventh centuries and, so the argument goes, remained the vehicle for a narrative tradition of historical writing for the rest of the Middle Ages. This view of medieval historical writing emphasizes the isolation of monks in monasteries separated from the rest of the world, an almost exclusively male view of society and its past, and a literary tradition of historiography rooted in Christian religion. This book will present a different view.
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Notes
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© 1999 E. M. C. van Houts
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van Houts, E. (1999). Introduction. In: Memory and Gender in Medieval Europe 900–1200. Explorations in Medieval Culture and Society. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-27515-1_1
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