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History and Memory in the Carolingian World

Rosamond McKitterick author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Cambridge University Press

Published:29th Jul '04

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History and Memory in the Carolingian World cover

This 2004 book looks at the writing and reading of history during the early middle ages.

A remarkable quantity and variety of history was written in Frankish realms of Western Europe in the eighth and ninth centuries. This 2004 work examines the understanding of the past and use of history contained in these books and their role in forming political ideologies and senses of identity within Europe.The writing and reading of history in the early Middle Ages form the key themes of this 2004 book. The primary focus is on the remarkable manifestations of historical writing in relation to historical memory in the Frankish kingdoms of the eighth and ninth centuries. It considers the audiences for history in the Frankish kingdoms, the recording of memory in new genres including narrative histories, cartularies and Libri memoriales, and thus particular perceptions of the Frankish and Christian past. It analyses both original manuscript material and key historical texts from the Carolingian period, a remarkably creative period in the history of European culture. Presentations of the past developed in this period were crucial in forming an historical understanding of the Greco-Roman and Judaeo-Christian past and, in subsequent centuries, of early medieval Europe. They also played an extraordinarily influential role in the formation of political ideologies and senses of identity within Europe.

'This volume … raises central questions about the conscious and implicit functions of Carolingian historical texts, their setting in a broader and more fluid historical narrative, and the evidence for how they circulated. There are important demonstrations of how the manuscripts provide an amplification and a check on what a printed edition can reveal.' Institute of Historical Research

ISBN: 9780521827171

Dimensions: 229mm x 152mm x 24mm

Weight: 690g

354 pages