Abstract
Remembrance of things past is inextricably bound up with family life. Medieval people had parents, grandparents and great-grandparents whom they remembered if not personally, then through the stories told by others. Then, as now, the overlapping circles of the three-generation family, and of their wider kin, generated the stories about the past discussed in this book. The evidence for knowledge amongst the noble classes and literate people, that is those groups who have left documentation about their ancestors, is overwhelming. What are the more specific conclusions we can draw if we remind ourselves of the three broad themes which we have discussed in this book: oral tradition, memory and gender?
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Notes
Petri Damiani, De parentelae gradibus, ed. Migne, PL, 144, 191–208; and discussion in C. Bouchard, ‘Consanguinity and noble marriages in the tenth and eleventh centuries’, Speculum, 56 (1981), 268–87;
J. Goody, The Development of the Family and Marriage in Europe (Cambridge, 1983), 134–46;
C. Brooke, The Medieval Idea of Marriage (Cambridge, 1989), 70–4, 134–7.
G. Duby, La société chévâleresque. Hommes et structures, vol. 1 (Paris, 1988), see: Ch. 8 ‘Structures de parenté et noblesse dans la France du Nord au XIe et XIIe siècles’, 143–66; and Ch. 9 ‘Remarques sur la littérature généalogique en France au XIe et XIIe siècles’, 167–80.
P. Geary, Phantoms of Remembrance. Memory and Oblivion at the End of the First Millennium (Berkeley, 1994), 43–80.
S. Kay, The ‘Chansons de geste’ in the Age of Romance: Political Fictions (Oxford, 1995), 33, 103–15.
The lack of source material for the central Middle Ages has often been discussed, though snippets strongly suggest common patterns north and south of the Alps, see K. Leyser, Rule and Conflict in an Early Medieval Society. Ottoman Saxony (Oxford, 1979), 49–62, esp. 51–2;
D. Herlihy, Medieval Households (Harvard, 1985), 103–11; and Duby, La Société chévâleresque, Ch. 7 ‘Les jeunes dans la société aristocratique dans la France du Nord-Ouest au XIIe siècle’, 129–42. I am most grateful to Richard Smith for discussing this material with me.
D. Herlihy, Medieval Households (Harvard, 1985), 103–11;
D. Herlihy, ‘The generation in medieval history’, Viator, 5 (1974), 347–64;
R. M. Smith, ‘Geographical diversity in the resort to marriage in late medieval Europe: work, reputation and unmarried females in the household formation systems of northern and southern Europe’, Woman is a Worthy Wight. Women in English Society c. 1200–1500, ed. P.J. P. Goldberg (Stroud, 1992), 16–59, esp. 27–46.
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© 1999 E. M. C. van Houts
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van Houts, E. (1999). Conclusion. In: Memory and Gender in Medieval Europe 900–1200. Explorations in Medieval Culture and Society. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-27515-1_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-27515-1_7
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
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