{"product_id":"telling-tales-joel-t-rosenthal-9780271023045","title":"Telling Tales: Sources and Narration in Late Medieval England","description":"\u003cp\u003eOne of the great challenges facing historians of any era is to make the strangeness of the past comprehensible in the present. This task is especially difficult for scholars of the Middle Ages, a period that can seem particularly alien to modern sensibilities. In \u003ci\u003eTelling Tales, \u003c\/i\u003e Joel Rosenthal takes us on a journey through some familiar sources from fourteenth- and fifteenth-century England to show how memories and recollections can be used to build a compelling portrait of daily life in the late Middle Ages. Rosenthal is a senior medievalist whose work over the years has spanned several related areas, including family history, women's history, the life cycle, and memory and testimony. In \u003ci\u003eTelling Tales, \u003c\/i\u003ehe brings all of these interests to bear on three seemingly disparate bodies of sources: the letters of Margaret Paston, depositions from a dispute between the Scropes and Grosvenors over a contested coat of arms, and Proof of Age proceedings, whereby the legal majority of an heir was established.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn Rosenthal's hands these familiar sources all speak to questions of testimony, memory, and narrative at a time when written records were just becoming widespread. In Margaret Paston, we see a woman who helped hold family and family business together as she mastered the arduous and complex task of letter writing. In the knights whose tales were elicited for the Scrope and Grosvenor case, we witness the bonding of men-at-arms in the Hundred Years War. From the Proofs of Age, we have brief tales that are rich in the give-and-take of daily life in the village--memories of baptisms, burials, a trip to market, a fall from a roof, or marriage to another juror's sister. From a historian at the top of his craft, \u003ci\u003eTelling Tales \u003c\/i\u003eshows how medievalists can turn scraps of recollection into a synthetic story, one that enables us to recapture the strange and lost country of the European Middle Ages.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Joel T. Rosenthal\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 027102304X\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780271023045\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Penn State University Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 10\/09\/2003\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 217\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Hardcover\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 1.17lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 9.70h x 6.32w x 0.94d\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eReview Citation(s): \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eChoice\u003c\/i\u003e 06\/01\/2004 pg. 1952","brand":"Joel T. Rosenthal","offers":[{"title":"Hardcover","offer_id":48064808026367,"sku":"9780271023045","price":83.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/2982\/9887\/files\/img_0bb9e0c7-8404-4ba0-8345-5369fd20e9a7.jpg?v=1768671164","url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/telling-tales-joel-t-rosenthal-9780271023045","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}