Medieval Europe - 20 credits (HS1101)
Module convenor: Professor Peter Edbury
The module provides an introduction to the history of Europe during the Middle Ages. Europe between the years 1050 and 1320 was a dynamic region experiencing rapid social, economic and cultural change. This period saw the rise of castles and knights, of towns and trade routes, of faith and heresy, new learning and crusades. Old certainties were being challenged and new vistas of knowledge and geographical expansion opened. Modern states and governments began to form, and the old empires crumbled. This module draws on original records and commentaries, written and visual evidence, to examine this transformation of Europe from a continent emerging from the Dark Ages to the dawn of the Renaissance.
Recommended background reading:
Malcolm Barber, The Two Cities. Medieval Europe, 1050-1320, 2nd edn (Routledge, 2004)
Robert Bartlett, The Making of Europe. Conquest, Colonisation and Cultural Change, 950-1350 (Penguin, 1993)
Marcus Bull, Thinking Medieval: An Introduction to the Study of the Middle Ages (Palgrave, 2005)
William Chester Jordan, Europe in the High Middle Ages (Penguin, 2001)
Jacques Le Goff, Medieval Civilisation, 400-1500 (Blackwell, 1988)
Jacques Le Goff, The Birth of Europe, 400-1500, new edn (Blackwell, 2005)
Christine Garwood, Flat Earth: the History of an Infamous Idea (2007)
George Holmes, ed. The Oxford [Illustrated] History of Medieval Europe (1988)
R.I. Moore, The First European Revolution (Blackwell, 2000)
R. Simek, Heaven and Earth in the Middle Ages (1992)