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Title: The Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages by Norman F. Cantor ISBN: 0-670-10011-0 Publisher: Viking Books Pub. Date: 01 May, 1999 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $45.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.64 (11 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Wonderful Reference Work. Very Helpful.
Comment: This book is exactly what the title claims: An Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages. The book is a great reference tool for students and interested readers of the Middle Ages. It is an A to Z complete guide of events, people, places, things, and is heavily illustrated to bring to life the times of the Middle Ages period. Everything from leaders to politics, to exploration and wars, religious movements, and philosophies are covered. The atmosphere of the times is revealed and the events people were most involved in are depicted with great care. Times, dates, and details are carefully laid out for the reader in every category covered. Therefore, this makes for a wonderful one volume handy tool for easy and quick reference. Moreover, Norman Cantor is highly respected in his area of specialty - medieval history. You cannot go wrong with this as a research tool in your library.
Rating: 4
Summary: 1000 of History
Comment: 'The Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages', edited by Robert Cantor (Rhodes Scholar, Fulbright Fellow, &c.) is a good reference work, an encyclopedic dictionary, covering the roughly 1000 years from the fall of Rome to the Renaissance. In addition the usual definition-explanation entries, it has three types of sidebar essays: Illuminations, which focus on sources, Life in the Middle Ages, which talks about common life details, and Legend and Lore, which explores imaginative concepts which informed medieval life.
There are maps, literally hundreds of photographs and illustrations, a layout that is inviting for study, reference, or general reading. It is 'easy on the eyes', much more so that a usual encyclopedia.
The scope of this work is also broader than most medieval reference texts. 'Despite what students of medieval history are accustomed to reading, life did exist outside of Europe in the Middle Ages.' That having been said, this is still a very euro-centric book. This book gives a great deal of attention to science, medicine, and other topics often ignored or pushed to the periphery of a more politically-oriented textual treatment.
There is an introductory essay that is well worth reading even if this is meant to be an on-the-shelf-for-reference-only sort of book. In talking about the influence on popular culture of the Middle Ages (everything from The Name of the Rose to the medieval garb, feudal structure and apprenticeship-education framework of Star Wars), Cantor says:
'In order to recognise [this Middle Ages influence] one has to have at some time known, and this has been the job of historians, who today painfully append to Santayana's famous saying (about those forgetting the past being condemned to repeat it) the observation that one cannot forget a history one did not know in the first place.'
Cantor describes twentieth century medievalists as being on a quest for 'wellsprings of a romantic and idealistic consciousness that would inspire a vibrant counterculture.' There is some of that in this book, but largely being encyclopedic rather than analytical and critical in nature, the reader/researcher can use the information contained herein for his own evaluations.
From the Abbadid and Abbasid Dynasties to Yaroslave the Wise and Yugoslavia, from Boethius to Wycliffe, this book has hidden treats and interesting articles for all.
Rating: 1
Summary: Not a reliable sourcebook for the Middle Ages
Comment: Supposedly, this book was put together by some of the "world's most distinguished medievalists"! One hopes not! In addition to the glaring errors of taste and judgment pointed out by some of the other reviewers, the factual errors are astonishing! One of the most egregious errors occurs on p. 138: "Eleanor of Aquitaine, wife of two kings, Philip I of France and Henry I of England"!!!!! Eleanor, of course, was the wife of Louis VII of France and of Henry II of England! This kind of sloppiness is simply not acceptable in a book that purports to be by "someof the world's best medieval historians" (fronticepiece). The pictures are pretty; some of the articles are acceptable (but hardly noteworthy), but the book should be avoided at all costs by serious (or would-be) students of the Medieval Period.
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Title: The Civilization of the Middle Ages: A Completely Revised and Expanded Edition of Medieval History by Norman F. Cantor ISBN: 0060925531 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 01 August, 1994 List Price(USD): $18.00 |
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Title: Medieval Reader by Norman F. Cantor ISBN: 0062720554 Publisher: HarperResource Pub. Date: 05 July, 1995 List Price(USD): $21.00 |
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Title: Medieval Panorama by Robert Bartlett ISBN: 0892366427 Publisher: J. Paul Getty Trust Publications Pub. Date: 01 November, 2001 List Price(USD): $50.00 |
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Title: Inventing the Middle Ages by Norman F. Cantor ISBN: 0688123023 Publisher: Quill Pub. Date: 01 February, 1993 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: The Oxford History of Medieval Europe by George Holmes ISBN: 0192801333 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: 01 March, 2002 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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