Reading the Juggler of Notre Dame

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Marguerite De Angeli

From the back cover of Scholastic Inc. copy of this book: By Marguerite de Angeli, recipient of the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award, the Regina Medal, and the Newberry Medal. The bells clang above plague-ridden London as Robin lies helpless, cold, and hungry. The great house is empty, his father is fighting the Scots in the north, his mother is traveling with the Queen, and the servants have fled. He calls for help but only the stones hear his cries. Suddenly someone else is in the house, coming towards Robin to St. Mark's Monastery, where he will be cared for until his father sends for him. At last a message comes – Robin is to meet his father at Castle Lindsay. The journey is dangerous, and the castle is located near the hostile Welsh border. Perched high in the hills, the castle appears invincible. But it is not. Under the cover of a thick fog the Welsh attack the castle. And robin is the only one who can save it... “An enthralling and inspiring tale...Unusually beautiful illustrations, full of detail, combine with the text to make life in England during the Middle Ages come alive.” ~ *The New York Times*

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John Farman

Presents information on various kinds of knights, the history of knighthood, the Crusades, tournaments, daily life, and more.

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Roberta L. Krueger

This study focusses on the relationship between Old French verse romances and the women who formed a part of their audience, and challenges the commonly held view that all courtly literature promoted the social welfare of the noblewomen to whom romances were dedicated or addressed. Using reader-response theory, feminist criticism, and recent historical studies, Roberta Krueger provides close readings of a selection of texts, both well-known and less well-known, to show an intriguing variety of portrayals of women: misogynistic, idealizing, and didactic. She suggests that romances not only taught their audiences idealized models of masculine and feminine behavior, but also invited their readers to criticize and to resist gender roles

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Georges Duby

In this volume Georges Duby - member of the Academie Francaise and one of the preeminent medieval scholars of our time - addresses the theme of love and marriage in the Middle Ages. These essays enrich Duby's position as the virtual progenitor and unequalled master of medieval social history. Rather than charting the evolution of love as a mere history of feelings, passions, and mentalities independent of or isolated from the history of other components of social education, Duby places this evolution in the material context of social relationships and daily life. Examining the poetry and practice of courtly love and the mores of aristocratic marriages, Duby shows the Middle Ages to be male-dominated. Women were regarded as symbols, as figures of temptation who paradoxically had no desires of their own. Duby argues that the structure of sexual relationships took its cue from the family and from feudalism - both bastions of masculinity . Duby also reflects on general issues in the writing of cultural history, on the history of pain and heresy, and gives a personal view of the state of historical research in France over recent generations. He argues that the rapid growth of interest in the history of marriage and the family reflects contemporary disquiet stemming from crises in the familiar structures of late twentieth-century society. Beautifully written in Duby's characteristically nuanced and powerful style, this collection is the ideal entree into Duby's thinking about marriage and the diversities of love, spousal decorum, family structure, and their cultural context in bodily and spiritual values. It will be of great interest to students in social and cultural history, in medieval and early modern history, and in women's studies. It will also appeal to a broader audience interested in the nature of social life in the Middle Ages