Peasant Perspectives on the Medieval Landscape: A study of three communities

This compelling new study forms part of a new wave of scholarship on the medieval rural environment in which the focus moves beyond purely socio-economic concerns to incorporate the lived experience of peasants. For too long, the principal intellectual approach has been to consider both subject and...

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Main Author: Kilby, Susan
Format: Book
Language:unknown
Published: 2020
Subjects:
Online Access:https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/3324113
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spelling ftunnottinghamrr:oai:nottingham-repository.worktribe.com:3324113 2023-05-15T16:17:06+02:00 Peasant Perspectives on the Medieval Landscape: A study of three communities Kilby, Susan 2020-03-02 https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/3324113 unknown https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/3324113 9781912260201 Arts & Humanities - English Language and Literature Arts & Humanities - History Social Sciences - Archaeology Institute for Medieval Research Institute for Name-Studies Global Research Theme - Cultures and Communications Global Research Theme - Sustainable Societies Book 2020 ftunnottinghamrr 2022-10-13T22:14:16Z This compelling new study forms part of a new wave of scholarship on the medieval rural environment in which the focus moves beyond purely socio-economic concerns to incorporate the lived experience of peasants. For too long, the principal intellectual approach has been to consider both subject and evidence from a modern, rationalist perspective and to afford greater importance to the social elite. New perspectives are needed.By re-evaluating the source material from the perspective of the peasant worldview, it is possible to build a far more detailed representation of rural peasant experience. Susan Kilby seeks to reconstruct the physical and socio-cultural environment of three contrasting English villages – Lakenheath in Suffolk, Castor in Northamptonshire and Elton in Huntingdonshire – between c. 1086 and c. 1348 and to use this as the basis for determining how peasants perceived their natural surroundings. In so doing she draws upon a vast array of sources including documents, material culture, place-names and family names, and the landscape itself. At the same time, she explores the approaches adopted by a wide variety of academic disciplines, including onomastics, anthropology, ethnography, landscape archaeology and historical geography. This highly interdisciplinary process reveals exciting insights into peasant mentalities. For example, cultural geographers’ understanding of the ways in which different groups ‘read’ their local landscape has profound implications for the ways in which we might interpret evidence left to us by medieval English peasant communities, while anthropological approaches to place-naming demonstrate the distinct possibility that there were similarities between the naming practices of First Nations people and medieval society. Both groups used key landscape referents and also used names as the means by which locally important history, folklore and legends were embedded within the landscape itself. Among many valuable insights, this study also reveals that, although uneducated in ... Book First Nations University of Nottingham: Repository@Nottingham
institution Open Polar
collection University of Nottingham: Repository@Nottingham
op_collection_id ftunnottinghamrr
language unknown
topic Arts & Humanities - English Language and Literature
Arts & Humanities - History
Social Sciences - Archaeology
Institute for Medieval Research
Institute for Name-Studies
Global Research Theme - Cultures and Communications
Global Research Theme - Sustainable Societies
spellingShingle Arts & Humanities - English Language and Literature
Arts & Humanities - History
Social Sciences - Archaeology
Institute for Medieval Research
Institute for Name-Studies
Global Research Theme - Cultures and Communications
Global Research Theme - Sustainable Societies
Kilby, Susan
Peasant Perspectives on the Medieval Landscape: A study of three communities
topic_facet Arts & Humanities - English Language and Literature
Arts & Humanities - History
Social Sciences - Archaeology
Institute for Medieval Research
Institute for Name-Studies
Global Research Theme - Cultures and Communications
Global Research Theme - Sustainable Societies
description This compelling new study forms part of a new wave of scholarship on the medieval rural environment in which the focus moves beyond purely socio-economic concerns to incorporate the lived experience of peasants. For too long, the principal intellectual approach has been to consider both subject and evidence from a modern, rationalist perspective and to afford greater importance to the social elite. New perspectives are needed.By re-evaluating the source material from the perspective of the peasant worldview, it is possible to build a far more detailed representation of rural peasant experience. Susan Kilby seeks to reconstruct the physical and socio-cultural environment of three contrasting English villages – Lakenheath in Suffolk, Castor in Northamptonshire and Elton in Huntingdonshire – between c. 1086 and c. 1348 and to use this as the basis for determining how peasants perceived their natural surroundings. In so doing she draws upon a vast array of sources including documents, material culture, place-names and family names, and the landscape itself. At the same time, she explores the approaches adopted by a wide variety of academic disciplines, including onomastics, anthropology, ethnography, landscape archaeology and historical geography. This highly interdisciplinary process reveals exciting insights into peasant mentalities. For example, cultural geographers’ understanding of the ways in which different groups ‘read’ their local landscape has profound implications for the ways in which we might interpret evidence left to us by medieval English peasant communities, while anthropological approaches to place-naming demonstrate the distinct possibility that there were similarities between the naming practices of First Nations people and medieval society. Both groups used key landscape referents and also used names as the means by which locally important history, folklore and legends were embedded within the landscape itself. Among many valuable insights, this study also reveals that, although uneducated in ...
format Book
author Kilby, Susan
author_facet Kilby, Susan
author_sort Kilby, Susan
title Peasant Perspectives on the Medieval Landscape: A study of three communities
title_short Peasant Perspectives on the Medieval Landscape: A study of three communities
title_full Peasant Perspectives on the Medieval Landscape: A study of three communities
title_fullStr Peasant Perspectives on the Medieval Landscape: A study of three communities
title_full_unstemmed Peasant Perspectives on the Medieval Landscape: A study of three communities
title_sort peasant perspectives on the medieval landscape: a study of three communities
publishDate 2020
url https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/3324113
genre First Nations
genre_facet First Nations
op_relation https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/3324113
9781912260201
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