Living Dangerously: On the Margins in Medieval and Early Modern Europe

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L I V I N G D A N G E R O U S L Y ON THE MA RG INS I N MEDI EVAL AND EARLY MODERN EUROPE EDITE D B Y BAR BARA A. H ANAWALT AN D ANNA GROTANS “Living Dangerously: On the Margins in Medieval and Early Modern Europe is an engrossing, learned collection of articles by recognized historians and literary scholars. Drawing on legal, archival, and literary evidence, they introduce us to real characters—in both senses—who transgressed boundaries and norms. Whether the lines crossed are social, financial, sexual, or spiritual, we learn that those on the margins are central to our understanding of these eras.” —marjorie curry woods, the university of texas at austin “The essays in this volume take the reader on an intellectual voyage of adventure across space and time in premodern Europe, stopping off in Germany, the Low Countries, England, Spain, and France. They lucidly explore those messy, contradictory, and fascinating realms of life and thought (marriage, theology, commerce, gender, sexuality, law) where transgression and convention intersect. Thought-provoking. A must-read.” —ann marie rasmussen, duke university “This collection breaks new ground in its attention to the marginalized and rascalous members of medieval and renaissance society. First, it rightly treats as permeable the artificial boundary between ‘medieval’ and ‘renaissance’ cultures, seeing them synoptically rather than independently. Second, it boldly incorporates as contiguous both European and New World cultures, seeing them as related rather than discontinuous. These interdisciplinary essays are first rate.” —daniel t. kline, university of alaska anchorage Some of the essays in Living Dangerously explore obvious marginalized classes, such as criminals , gypsies, and prostitutes, others challenge traditional understandings of the margin by showing that female mystics, speculators in the Dutch mercantile empire, and writers of satire, for example, could fall into the margins. These essays reveal the symbiotic relationship that exists between the marginalized and the social establishment: the dominant culture needs its margins. Contributors: Barbara A. Hanawalt, Richard Firth Green, Vickie Ziegler, Dyan Elliott, Anne J. Cruz, Ian Frederick Moulton, and Mary Lindemann. BARBARA A. HANAWALT is King George III Professor of British History at The Ohio State University. ANNA GROTANS is associate professor of German at The Ohio State University. University of Notre Dame Press Notre Dame, IN 46556 www.undpress.nd.edu living DAN G E ROU SLY ON THE MARGINS IN MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN EUROPE edited by Barbara A. Hanawalt and Anna Grotans ...