This book is the first of its kind to engage explicitly with the practice of conceptual history as it relates to the study of the Middle Ages, exploring the pay-offs and pitfalls of using concepts in medieval history. Concepts are indispensable to historians as a means of understanding past societies, but those concepts conjured in an effort to bring order to the infinite complexity of the past have a bad habit of taking on a life of their own and inordinately influencing historical interpretation. The most famous example is ‘feudalism’, whose fate as a concept is reviewed here by E.A.R. Brown nearly fifty years after her seminal article on the topic. The volume’s contributors offer a series of case studies of other concepts – 'colony', 'crisis', 'frontier', 'identity', 'magic', 'networks' and 'politics' – that have been influential, particularly among historians of Britain and Ireland in the later Middle Ages. The book explores the creative friction between historical ideas and analytical categories, and the potential for fresh and meaningful understandings to emerge from their dialogue.
Author(s): Jackson W. Armstrong, Peter Crooks, Andrea Ruddick
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 212
City: Cham
Preface
Contents
Notes on Contributors
Part I Introductions
1 ‘Tyrannous Constructs’ or Tools of the Trade? the Use and Abuse of Concepts in Medieval History
Tyrannous Constructs
Looking Under the Bonnet
Using Concepts: Goals and Choices
2 Feudalism: Reflections on a Tyrannical Construct’s Fate
The Moment
My Article
My Expectations and Feudalism’s Strengths
Reactions, 1974–1994
Susan Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals, and the Aftermath
‘How It Really Was’: The Prospects for the Future
Conclusion
Part II Concepts in Use
3 Colony
Colony and Its Cognates: A Lexical Career
Another Tyrannous Construct?
The Vocabulary of Colony: The Case of Medieval Ireland
4 Crisis
5 Frontier
Scotland’s Frontiers: A Case Study
The South
The West
The North
6 Identity
The Life Cycle of a Concept
The Problem with ‘Identity’
Some Possible Solutions
‘Identity’ in Medieval Britain: Some Case-Studies
7 Magic
Magic and Religion
Magic and Science
Magic, Social History and Politics
8 Networks
Networks as Constructs
The Case of John Shillingford
The Origins of a Concept, 1940–1994
Diverging from the Norm, 1995–2021
* * *
9 Politics
Medieval Concepts of the Political
Historians’ Concepts of the Political
Conclusion
Part III Afterword
10 Reflections on Using Concepts
Index
