http://blog.medievalchester.ac.uk/2009/06/14/jane-laughtons-life-in-a-late-medieval-city/ Official blog for the AHRC funded Mapping Medieval Chester Project Mon, 21 Nov 2011 16:18:25 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 http://blog.medievalchester.ac.uk/2009/06/14/jane-laughtons-life-in-a-late-medieval-city/comment-page-1/#comment-445 Keith Lilley Mon, 06 Jul 2009 15:04:26 +0000 http://blog.medievalchester.ac.uk/?p=172#comment-445 For those who might be interested, I reviewed Dr Laughton's book for the journal 'Medieval Archaeology', and all being well it should be published this year. For further details on the journal see http://www.medievalarchaeology.org/ For those who might be interested, I reviewed Dr Laughton’s book for the journal ‘Medieval Archaeology’, and all being well it should be published this year. For further details on the journal see http://www.medievalarchaeology.org/

]]> http://blog.medievalchester.ac.uk/2009/06/14/jane-laughtons-life-in-a-late-medieval-city/comment-page-1/#comment-338 cclarke Mon, 15 Jun 2009 15:18:57 +0000 http://blog.medievalchester.ac.uk/?p=172#comment-338 I’ve also found Jane’s book very helpful as I’ve worked on this project. I’ve found her approach to be a useful corrective to reading literary-critical studies which inevitably prioritise the agendas and politics of the monastic texts – after reading so much on Lucian and Bradshaw it was quite a shock to see her remark that ‘the jurisdiction of the Benedictine abbey posed a… serious threat to social harmony’ in medieval Chester (p. 130), or to have the Great Charter of 1506 described in positive terms (pp. 38-9)! I think a great strength of Jane’s book is the way that it presents stories – narratives involving specific individuals and incidents, reconstructed from the available evidence. It’s been fascinating to put these glimpses into urban reality alongside the visions of Chester in the literary texts, with all their idealisations and elisions. I’ve also found Jane’s book very helpful as I’ve worked on this project. I’ve found her approach to be a useful corrective to reading literary-critical studies which inevitably prioritise the agendas and politics of the monastic texts – after reading so much on Lucian and Bradshaw it was quite a shock to see her remark that ‘the jurisdiction of the Benedictine abbey posed a… serious threat to social harmony’ in medieval Chester (p. 130), or to have the Great Charter of 1506 described in positive terms (pp. 38-9)! I think a great strength of Jane’s book is the way that it presents stories – narratives involving specific individuals and incidents, reconstructed from the available evidence. It’s been fascinating to put these glimpses into urban reality alongside the visions of Chester in the literary texts, with all their idealisations and elisions.

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