Life and Death

[chargirlgenius]

I love Barbara Hanawalt, but man, is she depressing. She wrote about every day life for children in London, and now I’m finally reading The Ties that Bound: Peasant Families in Medieval England. She used coroners’ inquests for her main source of evidence, so every anecdote used to prove a point includes somebody dying!

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Obviously, people in the past faced death much differently than we do today. When you could easily die of a fever or an abscessed tooth, life, death, and risk took on different shapes than they do now. We now live in a world when we can know days in advance that a deadly storm is coming, and can get out of the way. I can’t even fathom what life (and death) was like before this was possible.

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Stay safe, everybody. I don’t think I have many on my flist from Texas, but I’m sure that people have friends and family there.

Comments

[ardenkris.livejournal.com]

I actually had her for a professor in college. She's great; but yes, depressing subjects.

She's now at OH state, if I am not mistaken.

[glasseye.livejournal.com]

The Ties that Bound is such a great book; we used it in my medieval history course in undergrad.

[frualeydis.livejournal.com]

I never found her books depressing. Maybe beacuse what she proved was that people did care about their children; which has been a hotly debated subject since the 1960s.
For more on children in the Middle Ages you should really read Shulamith Shahar.

/Eva

[noxcat.livejournal.com]

I'm in Texas, but Austin is on the 'dry' side of the storm. So far, no rain, just s few wind gusts that are similar to a cold front coming through. But Ike hasn't made landfall yet...

[quodscripsi.livejournal.com]

That book transformed my life. I think it is easier to handle the incidentals that she uses that happen to end in death the more familiar you get with them. The first book I read that used this sort of technique used saint miracle collections so the outcome was usually nice. These days I often don't even notice the outcome unless I'm looking for it.

While it is not a good page a day read try and get a copy of Lost Worlds: How Our European Ancestors Coped with Everyday Life and Why Life is so Hard Today by Imhof. While it deals heavily with 17th and 18th century Germany he looks at the problem from the opposite direction from most historians. Westerners tend to have a progressive view of the world so we tend to want to believe that things including our lives are always getting better. He starts with the arguement that our ancestors knew something(s) that we don't and that is why despite all our progress we seem to be having a more difficult time with life.

If you ever want to read a book that will make your guts just twist and you'll wish you were reading about incidental death try the Trial of Giles de Rais. It is the only book I have ever had to stop reading because I was having nightmares.

[belledlr.livejournal.com]

I, too, Had Dr. Hanawalt as a prof at the same time as ardenkris. What doesn't necessarily come through in her books is how humurous she really is. She was my favorite professor of all time and I view her as somewhat of a mentor. I took a Medieval Woman's class by her and it was the best class ever. All we did was read period women authors (Margery Kemp, Christine de Pisan, etc) and then discuss them after we read their works. It was awesome for a SCAdian! She is at Ohio State and I have her e-mail addie if you ever want to discuss her books or sources with her.