Georges Duby, a member of the Académie Française, is Professor of Medieval History at the Collège de France. Georges Duby, a member of the Académie Française, is Professor of Medieval History at the Collège de France.

What gives the volume its unity is not so much a rigorous definition of the subject, private life, as a consistency of concentration on a series of very interesting, interrelated themes: living space, and the degree of privacy that it can afford; family relationships, with special references to the nuclear group that centers around a single married couple; relations between the sexes (both amorous and domestic); attitudes toward the body and nudity; the sense of individuality and self-perception… This volume offers a very full, richly variegated picture of the life, in different places and at different periods, of the Middle Ages. It has lavish and well-chosen illustrations to match the text.

• Preface by Georges Duby 1. Introduction by Georges Duby Private Power, Public Power 2. Portraits by Georges Duby, Dominique Barthelemy, Charles de La Ronciere The Aristocratic Households of Feudal France Communal Living Kinship Tuscan Notables on the Eve of the Renaissance 3. Imagining the Self by Danielle Regnier-Bohler Exploring Literature 4. The Use of Private Space by Dominique Barthelemy, Philippe Contamine Civilizing the Fortress: Eleventh to Thirteenth Century Peasant Hearth to Papal Palace: The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries 5. The Emergence of the Individual by Georges Duby, Philippe Braunstein Solitude: Eleventh to Thirteenth Century Toward Intimacy: The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries Bibliography Credits Index