Urban Space in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Age

Albrecht Classen

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN: 9783110223897
• eBook ISBN: 9783110223903
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: European Medieval History
• Index: Literature

Although the city as a central entity did not simply disappear with the Fall of the Roman Empire, the development of urban space at least since the twelfth century played a major role in the history of medieval and early modern mentality within a social-economic and religious framework. Whereas some poets projected urban space as a new utopia, others simply reflected the new significance of the urban environment as a stage where their characters operate very successfully. As today, the premodern city was the locus where different social groups and classes got together, sometimes peacefully, sometimes in hostile terms. The historical development of the relationship between Christians and Jews, for instance, was deeply determined by the living conditions within a city. By the late Middle Ages, nobility and bourgeoisie began to intermingle within the urban space, which set the stage for dramatic and far-reaching changes in the social and economic make-up of society. Legal-historical aspects also find as much consideration as practical questions concerning water supply and sewer systems. Moreover, the early modern city within the Ottoman and Middle Eastern world likewise finds consideration. Finally, as some contributors observe, the urban space provided considerable opportunities for women to carve out a niche for themselves in economic terms.

Table of contents

• Frontmatter
• Table of Contents
• Urban Space in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Age: Historical, Mental, Cultural, and Social Economic Investigations
• The Dead and the Living: Some Medieval Descriptions of the Ruins and Relics of Rome Known to the English
• Defining the Medieval City through Death: A Case Study
• The Demographics of Urban Space in Crusade Period Jerusalem (1099–1187)
• Hereditary Laws and City Topography: On the Development of the Italian Notarial Archives in the Late Middle Ages
• “A reuer . . . brighter en boe the sunne and mone”: The Use of Water in the Medieval Consideration of Urban Space
• Jews and the City: Parameters of Jewish Urban Life in Late Medieval Austria
• Next Door Neighbors: Aspects of Judeo Christian Cohabitation in Medieval France
• Universal Salvation in the Earthly City: De Civitate Dei and the Significance of the Hazelnut in Julian of Norwich’s Showings
• “With Teeth Clenched and an Angry Face:” Vengeance, Visitors and Judicial Power in Fourteenth-Century France
• Urban and Liminal Space in Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale: Perilous or Protective?
• Imagining Urban Life and Its Discontents: Chaucer’s Cook’s Tale and Masculine Identity
• Women, Men, and Markets: The Gendering of Market Space in Late Medieval Ghent
• Anger and the City: Who Was in Charge of the Paris cabochien Revolt of 1413?
• “The Merchants of My Florence”: A Socio Political Complaint from 1457
• Urban Space Divided? The Encounter of Civic and Courtly Spheres in Late Medieval Towns
• Urban Literary Entertainment in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Age: The Example of Tyrol
• Urban Spaces in the Tragicomedia de Calisto y Melibea
• Hans Sachs and his Encomia Songs on German Cities: Zooming Into and Out of Urban Space from a Poetic Perspective. With a Consideration of Hartmann Schedel’s Liber Chronicarum (1493)
• Urban Space as Social Conscience in Isabella Whitney’s “Wyll and Testament”
• Waqf and its Influence on the Built Environment in the Medina of the Islamic Middle Eastern City
• The Role of Imperial Mosque Complexes (1543-1583) in the Urbanization of Üsküdar
• Early Modern Dutch Women in the City: The Imaging of Economic Agency and Power
• Sewers, Cesspools, and Privies: Waste as Reality and Metaphor in Pre modern European Cities
• Backmatter