Elisabeth van Houts – författare

Married Life in the Middle Ages, 900-1300 contains an analysis of the experience of married life by men and women in Christian medieval Europe, c. 900-1300. The study focusses on the social and emotional life of the married couple rather than on the institutional history of marriage, breaking it into three parts: Getting Married - the process of getting married and wedding celebrations; Married Life - the married life of lay couples and clergy, their sexuality, and any remarriage; and Alternative Living - which explores concubinage and polygyny, as well as the single life in contrast to monogamous sexual unions.In this volume, van Houts deals with four central themes. First, the tension between patriarchal family strategies and the individual family member's freedom of choice to marry and, if so, to what partner; second, the role played by the married priesthood in their quest to have individual agency and self-determination accepted in their own lives in the face of the growing imposition of clerical celibacy; third, the role played by women in helping society accept some degree of gender equality and self-determination to marry and in shaping the norms for married life incorporating these principles; fourth, the role played by emotion in the establishment of marriage and in married life at a time when sexual and spiritual love feature prominently in medieval literature.

Ranging from c. 1050 to c. 1600, The Literature and History of Anglo-Dutch Relations, Medieval to Modern crosses chronological, linguistic, geographical, and disciplinary boundaries to explore the cultural history of relations between English and Dutch speakers. The evidence consists of many different types and genres, taking account of the range of languages spoken and written in England and the Low Countries. Contributors move beyond source study to consider other ways in which speakers of Dutch and English took notice of each other in their writing. This book attempts to join up the study of literary transfer with historical evidence of contact situations. Stories, ideas, and 'memes' in our period did not travel without people to carry them.

Married Life in the Middle Ages, 900-1300 contains an analysis of the experience of married life by men and women in Christian medieval Europe, c. 900-1300. The study focusses on the social and emotional life of the married couple rather than on the institutional history of marriage, breaking it into three parts: Getting Married - the process of getting married and wedding celebrations; Married Life - the married life of lay couples and clergy, their sexuality, and any remarriage; and Alternative Living - which explores concubinage and polygyny, as well as the single life in contrast to monogamous sexual unions. In this volume, van Houts deals with four central themes. First, the tension between patriarchal family strategies and the individual family member's freedom of choice to marry and, if so, to what partner; second, the role played by the married priesthood in their quest to have individual agency and self-determination accepted in their own lives in the face of the growing imposition of clerical celibacy; third, the role played by women in helping society accept some degree of gender equality and self-determination to marry and in shaping the norms for married life incorporating these principles; fourth, the role played by emotion in the establishment of marriage and in married life at a time when sexual and spiritual love feature prominently in medieval literature.

The Warenne Chronicle is the more appropriate name for the Latin text known as the Hyde Chronicle. It covers the period from 1035 - the year in which Robert the Magnificent, duke of Normandy, died - up to the account of the White ship disaster in November 1120 when William Adelin, eldest son and heir of King Henry I, lost his life at the age of eighteen. The chronicle therefore covers the history of Normandy and England around the Norman Conquest of England with special reference to the earls of Warenne in Normandy. It is not a full blown dynastic history of this aristocratic family, but rather a historical narrative that emphasises the loyal support of the earls to the Norman rulers. The crucial question as to how far the Warenne chronicler may have covered the years beyond 1120 is impossible to settle definitively. The new argument put forward here is that the Warenne Chronicle was written early in the reign of King Henry II, probably shortly after 1157, for King Stephen's son William and his wife Isabel, heiress of Warenne, to provide an account of the invaluable help her ancestors had given to the Anglo-Norman rulers. Although the chronicle has survived anonymously, the suggestion is made that the author may have been Master Eustace of Boulogne, clerk and chancellor of William of Blois as fourth earl of Warenne. Unique information, other than that pertaining to the Warennes, concerns the commemoration of Queen Edith/Matilda, Henry I's rule in western Normandy, and the use of the word 'normananglus' (Norman-English) for the inhabitants of England of Norman origin.

An authoritative new biography of Empress Matilda  Born in 1102, Empress Matilda combined the blood of two dynasties: the house of Wessex and their conquerors, the dukes of Normandy. As a widowed German empress, she was named as heir successor by her father, Henry I. But, after his death in 1135, Matilda’s place on the English throne was usurped by her cousin, Stephen of Blois. Civil war followed, and she ruled the south-west of England in opposition.  Elisabeth van Houts explores the remarkable life of medieval England’s only queen regnant. Van Houts examines female rulership in the Middle Ages, from Matilda’s relationships with her husbands, to her self-identification as granddaughter of William the Conqueror. Matilda used her persuasiveness effectively with the men who surrounded her, including her father, husbands, half-brothers and cousins.  This is a fascinating account, which reveals Matilda to be an assertive, if on occasion disappointed, woman who made the best of her position with intelligence and stamina.

Remembering the past in the Middle Ages is a subject that is often perceived as a study of chronicles and annals written by monks in monasteries. Following in the footsteps of early Christian historians such as Eusebius and St Augustine, the medieval chroniclers are thought of as men isolated in their monastic institutions, writing about the world around them. As the sole members of their society versed in literacy, they had a monopoly on the knowledge of the past as preserved in learned histories, which they themselves updated and continued. A self-perpetuating cycle of monks writing chronicles, which were read, updated and continued by the next generation, so the argument goes, remained the vehicle for a narrative tradition of historical writing for the rest of the Middle Ages. Elisabeth van Houts challenges this view and emphasizes the collaboration between men and women in the memorial tradition of the Middle Ages through both narrative sources (chronicles, saints' lives and miracles) and material culture (objects such as jewellery, memorial stones and sacred vessels).

Who, exactly, was responsible for the preservation of knowledge about the past? How did men and women preserve their recollections and pass them on to the next generation? Did they write them down or did they hand them on orally? For the first time, tombstones, medieval encyclopaedias and legal testimonies figure alongside perceptions of the medieval past.

This book provides a selection from the abundant source material generated by the Normans and the peoples they conquered. As this study demonstrates, few other medieval peoples generated historical writing of such quantity and quality. Van Houts takes a wide European perspective on the Normans, assessing and explaining their origin, the Norman expansion and their political and social organisation in the period between c. 900 to c. 1150.The Normans in Europe explores such areas as: the process of assimilation between Scandinavians and Franks and the emergence of Normandy; the internal organisation of the prinicpality with a variety of source materials from chronicles, miracle stories and charters; the roles of women and children in Norman society; the main chronicle sources for the history of the Norman invasion and settlement in Britain; the contacts between the Norman dukes and the territorial princes of France, and the progress of the Normans amongst the settlers in Southern Italy and elsewhere in the Mediterranean.

Who, exactly, was responsible for the preservation of knowledge about the past? How did people preserve their recollections and pass them on to the next generation? Did they write them down or did they hand then on orally? The book is concerned with the memories of medieval people. In the Middle Ages, as now, men and women collected stories about the past and handed them down to posterity. Many memories centre in the aristocratic family or lineage while others are focussed on institutions such as monasteries or nunneries. The family and monastic contexts clearly illustrate that remembrance of the past was a task for men and women and that each sex had a specific gendered role. Memory also involves selection of what should and should not be remembered and its corollary, amnesia, therefore, is discussed. Anchored in the present, memory casts a shadow on the future and thus prophecies form an important component of the cult of remembrance. For the first time in Medieval Memories, tombstones, medieval encyclopaedias and legal testimonies figure alongside moral guidebooks, miracle stories and chronicles as material for the gendered perceptions of the medieval past.