Roadworks

Valerie Allen is Professor of English at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNYRuth Evans is Professor of English at Saint Louis University

‘The editors are to be congratulated on the strength of the essays and the way they complement each other despite the diversity of approaches taken by their authors. The reader also benefits from the clarity and uniformity of presentation, and the generally very high standard of copy editing. More illustrations would have been welcome for a subject that cries out for maps, but this is a small gripe about a book that offers so much to all of those interested in a topic that unites different disciplines.’The Journal of transport history vol 37 (2), Stephen Mileson, Victoria County History, Oxfordshire‘‘Roadworks’ represents a major contribution to our understanding of roads in the medieval period. Its thirteen chapters cover a wide range of sources and methodologies, and – considering that much of the major literature on the subject is very old – its revisionist position is very welcome.’Owen Davies, University of Hertfordshire, Landscapes, June 2017‘It falls beyond the scope of this review to rehearse the specific arguments made by each of these thirteen fine essays, but each and every one of them sheds important light on British roads (and rivers, bridges, forests and coastlines) and how they ‘inscribe the wayfarer as homo viator in ways often more fundamental than how human technology imposes meaning on roads’ (p.3). Collectively they thus make an important contribution to the emerging field of medieval infrastructures and demonstrate its relevance to numerous subfields and medieval studies more broadly.’Guy Geltner, Universiteit van Amsterdam, JRG, Vol 131, No 2, 2018

• Introduction: Roads and writing – Valerie Allen and Ruth Evans1. Sources for the English medieval road system – Paul Hindle2. Once a highway, always a highway: roads and English law, c.1150–1300 – Alan Cooper3. When things break: mending roads, being social – Valerie Allen4. The word on the street: Chaucer and the regulation of nuisance in post-plague London – Sarah Rees Jones5. Getting there: wayfinding in the Middle Ages – Ruth Evans6. The function of material and spiritual roads in the English eremitic tradition – Michelle M. Sauer7. The Royal Itinerary and roads in England under Edward I – Michael Prestwich8. The pilgrimage road in late medieval literature Shayne – Aaron Legassie9. The romance of the road in Athelston and two late medieval Robin Hood ballads – Chris Chism10. London: the hub of an English river transport network, 1250–1550 – Claire Martin11. Conquest, roads and resistance in medieval Wales – Dylan Foster Evans12. Trackless, impenetrable and under-developed? Roads, colonisation and environmental transformation in the Anglo-Scottish border zone c.1100 to c.1300 – Richard OramIndex