Writing Medieval Biography, 750-1250: Essays in Honour of Frank Barlow

A survey both of medieval biographical writings, and the problems of recovering medieval lives. Biography is one of the oldest, most popular and most tenacious of literary forms. Perhaps the best attested narrative form of the Middle Ages, it continues to draw modern historians of the medieval period to its peculiar challenge to explicate the general through the particular: the biographer's decisions to impose or to resist the imposition of order on biographical remnants raise issues which go to the heart of historical method. This collection, compiled in honour of a distinguished modern exponent of the art of biography, contains sixteen essays by leading scholars which examine the limits and possibilities of the genre for the period between 750AD and 1250AD. Ranging from pivotal figures such as Charlemagne, William the Conqueror and St Bernard, to the anonymous female skeleton in an Anglo-Saxon grave, from kings and queens to clerks and saints, and from individual to the collective biographies,this collection investigates both medieval biographical writings, and the issues surrounding the writing of medieval lives. Professor DAVID BATES is Director of the Institute of Historical Research; Dr JULIA CRICK and DrSARAH HAMILTON teach in the Department of History at the University of Exeter. Contributors: JANET L. NELSON, ROBIN FLEMING, BARBARA YORKE, RICHARD ABELS, SIMON KEYNES, PAULINE STAFFORD, ELISABETH VAN HOUTS, DAVID BATES,JANE MARTINDALE, CHRISTOPHER HOLDSWORTH, LINDY GRANT, MARJORIE CHIBNALL, EDMUND KING, JOHN GILLINGHAM, DAVID CROUCH, NICHOLAS VINCENT

Table of Contents:
Did Charlemagne Have a Private Life? - Janet L Nelson Bones for Historians: Putting the Body back into Biography - Robin Fleming `Carriers of the Truth': Writing the Biographies of Anglo-Saxon Female Saints - Barbara Yorke Alfred and His Biographers: Images and Imagination - Richard Abels Re-reading King Æthelred the Unready - Simon D Keynes Writing the Biography of Eleventh-Century Queens - Pauline Stafford The Flemish Contribution to Biographical Writing in England in the Eleventh Century - Elisabeth Van Houts The Conqueror's Earliest Historians and the Writing of His Biography - David Bates Secular Propaganda and Aristocratic Values: The Autobiographies of Count Fulk le Rechin of Anjou and Count William of Poitou, Duke of Aquitaine - Jane P. Martindale Reading the Signs: Bernard of Clairvaux and His Miracles - C J Holdsworth Arnulf's Mentor: Geoffrey of Lèves, Bishop of Chartres - Lindy Grant The Empress Matilda as a Subject for Biography - Marjorie Chibnall The Gesta Stephani - Edmund King Writing the Biography of Roger of Howden, King's Clerk and Chronicler - John B Gillingham Writing a Biography in the Thirteenth Century: the Construction and Composition of the `History of Willliam Marshal' - David Crouch The Strange Case of the Missing Biographies: The Lives of the Plantaganet Kings of England 1154-1272 - Nicholas Vincent

About the Author :
David Crouch is a fellow of the British Academy and author of a number of editions of medieval documents, most recently The Acts and Letters of the Marshal Family (2015) for the Camden Society. He has written extensively on medieval politics and society, and was also editor of Volume 10 (Howden and Howdenshire) of the Victoria History of Yorkshire East Riding. Elisabeth van Houts is Honorary Professor of European Medieval History, University of Cambridge, and Fellow of Emmanuel College. NICHOLAS VINCENT is Professor of Medieval History at the University of East Anglia and a Fellow of the British Academy

Review :
It bespeaks the vibrancy of the subject and the guiding hands of the editors that, unusually for an edited collection, this one forms an intellectually and thematically coherent whole. [This] splendid book [...] provides a series of thought-provoking affirmations of the place of biography among the historical sciences. BIOGRAPHY: A fine volume. All in all, this is a volume which anyone who wishes to attempt the biography of a medieval individual should regard as essential reading, and anyone interested in medieval people as individuals should read as a matter of course The articles [.] are uniformly excellent and immensely thoughtful. [.] Reading any of them will make one a better historian.