Compiled from the records of a survey of the kingdom of England commissioned by William the Conqueror in 1085, Domesday Book is a key source for the history of England. However, despite over 200 years of intense academic study, its evidence has rarely been exploited to the full (partly owing to a lack of a critical edition). The essays in this volume seek to realize the potential of Domesday Book by focussing on the manuscript itself. There are analyses of abbreviations, letter forms, and language; re-assessments of key sources, the role of tenants-in-chief in producing them, and the nature of the Norman settlement that their forms illuminate; a re-evaluation of the data and its referents; and finally, fresh examinations of the afterlife of the Domesday text and how it was subsequently perceived. In identifying new categories of evidence and revisiting old ones, these studies point to a better understanding of the text. There are surprising insights into its sources and developing programme and, intriguingly, a system of encoding hitherto unsuspected. In its turn the import of its data becomes clearer, thereby shedding new light on Anglo-Norman society and governance. It is in these terms that this volume offers a departure in Domesday studies and looks forward to the resolution of long-standing problems that have hitherto bedevilled the interpretation of an iconic text.
Author(s): David Roffe, Katharine S. B. Keats-Rohan (eds.)
Publisher: The Boydell Press
Year: 2016
Language: English
Pages: 352
City: Woodbridge
Cover
Contents
Illustrations
Abbreviations
Preface and Acknowledgements
David Roffe. Introduction
1. David Roffe. Domesday Now: a View from the Stage
2. J. J. N. Palmer. A Digital Latin Domesday
3. David Roffe. McLuhan Meets the Master: Scribal Devices in Great Domesday Book
4. Frank Thorn. "Non Pascua sed Pastura": the Changing Choice of Terms in Domesday
5. Ian Taylor. Domesday Books? Little Domesday Book Reconsidered
6. Ann Williams. Hunting the Snark and Finding the Boojum: the Tenurial Revolution Revisited
7. K. S. B. Keats-Rohan. A Question of Identity: Domesday Prosopography and the Formation of the Honour of Richmond
8. Pamela Taylor. The Episcopal Returns in Domesday
9. Andrew G. Lowerre. Geospatial Technologies and the Geography of Domesday England in the Twenty-First Century
10. Howard B. Clarke. Condensing and Abbreviating the Data: Evesham C, Evesham M, and the Breviate
11. Sally Harvey. "A Deed without a Name"
12. David Roffe. Talking to Others and Talking to Itself: Government and the Changing Role of the Records of the Domesday Inquest
Frank Thorn: Caroline Thorn: an Appreciation
Index
