Phantoms of Remembrance: Memory and Oblivion at the End of the First Millennium.
Constance B. Bouchard|Patrick J. Geary
This text makes important inroads into the widely discussed topic of historical memory, evoking everyday lives 11th-century people and both their written nonwritten ways preserving past. Women praying for dead, monks creating recreating archives, scribes choosing which royal families past to applaud forget - it is from such sources that most our knowledge medieval period comes. Through descriptions various acts remembrance, including naming children recording visions, author unearths a wide range approaches as was or formulating an individual group prefers imagine. By focusing on turning point in history, one effort made make cultural break with previous centuries, Geary offers example specific mental social structures filtered memories communicated by elites ordinary individuals alike. The focuses former Carolingian empire compare how Provence Bavaria recalled familial, institutional, regional pasts. In examining accounts documents, he considers attitudes toward topics gender fashion politics religious practices shows these reveal transformations taking place 11th century well had already begun think about Throughout his investigation, maintains what matters not so much content remembered but rather are structured represented, ultimately forgotten along way.
The American Historical Review