SHERRI OLSON. A Mute Gospel: The People and Culture of the Medieval English Common Fields. (Studies and Texts, number 162.) Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies. 2009. Pp. 242. $75.00
Peter L. Larson
Historians of medieval England increasingly have explored the peasants' relation to land, from familial attachment common field system and economic decision making. Sherri Olson builds upon these broader corpus English socioeconomic history explore how peasants in two villages, Upwood Ellington, perceived, processed, reacted world around them. Investigating this cultural intellectual is a difficult task. There are no diaries peasants; most plentiful sources, court rolls other manorial records that been mainstay rural since late nineteenth century, themselves recorded terse formulaic Latin; narrative passages or testimony such as one might find Inquisition rare. One goals here demonstrate variety can be used establish peasant worldview by means aggregative disaggregative approaches,...
The American Historical Review