The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century - Couverture rigide

Mortimer, Ian

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 1439112894 ISBN 13 : 9781439112892

Editeur : Touchstone, 2009

Synopsis

The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England Looking at the past as a foreign country, this guidebook allows readers to experience the Middle Ages like never before. Full description

A propos du livre

Présentation de l'éditeur :

The past is a foreign country. This is your guidebook.

A time machine has just transported you back to the fourteenth century. What do you see? How do you dress? How do you earn a living and how much are you paid? What sort of food will you be offered by a peasant or a monk or a lord? And more important, where will you stay?

The Time Traveler’s Guide to Medieval England is not your typical look at a historical period. This radical new approach shows us that the past is not just something to be studied; it is also something to be lived. All facets of everyday life in this fascinating period are revealed, from the horrors of the plague and war to the ridiculous excesses of roasted larks and medieval haute couture.

Through the use of daily chronicles, letters, household accounts, and poems of the day, Mortimer transports you back in time, providing answers to questions typically ignored by traditional historians. You will learn how to greet people on the street, what to use as toilet paper, why a physician might want to taste your blood, and how to know whether you are coming down with leprosy.

From the first step on the road to the medieval city of Exeter, through meals of roast beaver and puffin, Mortimer re-creates this strange and complex period of history. Here, the lives of serf, merchant, and aristocrat are illuminated with re-markable detail in this engaging literary journey. The result is the most astonishing social history book you’re ever likely to read: revolutionary in its concept, informative and entertaining in its detail, and startling for its portrayal of humanity in an age of violence, exuberance, and fear.

Quatrième de couverture :

'He has a novelist's eye for detail, and his portrait of an England in which sheep are the size of dogs, 30-year-old women are regarded as so much "winter forage'', and green vegetables widely held to be poisonous has something of the hallucinatory quality of science-fiction' Daily Telegraph

The past is a foreign country; they did things differently there...

Imagine you could travel back to the fourteenth century. What would you see, and hear, and smell? Where would you stay? What are you going to eat? And how are you going to test to see if you are going down with the plague?

In The Time Traveller's Guide... Ian Mortimer's radical new approach turns our entire understanding of history upside down. History is not just something to be studied; it is also something to be lived, whether that's the life of a peasant or a lord. The result is perhaps the most astonishing history book you are ever likely to read; as revolutionary as it is informative, as entertaining as it is startling.

'Mortimer sets out to re-enchant the 14th Century, taking us by the hand through a landscape furnished with jousting nights, revolting peasants and beautiful ladies in wimples. It is Monty Python and the Holy Grail with footnotes, and, my goodness it is fun... the result of this careful blend of scholarship and fancy is a jaunty journey through the 14th Century, one that wriggles with the stuff of everyday life' Kathryn Hughes, Guardian

'Amazing...an incredible tour de force' Alison Weir

'Not only an unusual book, but a thoroughly engaging one' Literary Review

À propos de cette édition

• Éditeur: Touchstone
• Date d'édition: 2009
• ISBN 10: 1439112894
• ISBN 13: 9781439112892
• Reliure: Relié
• Numéro d'édition: 1
• Nombre de pages: 352