Can I read Medieval Households (Studies in Cultural History) on EtoBox?

Medieval Households (Studies in Cultural History) by Herlihy, David is a book available to read on EtoBox.

What is Medieval Households (Studies in Cultural History) about?

How should the medieval family be characterized? Who formed the household and what were the ties of kinship, law, and affection that bound the members together? David Herlihy explores these questions from ancient Greece to the households of fifteenth-century Tuscany, to provide a broad new interpretation of family life. In a series of bold hypotheses, he presents his ideas about the emergence of a distinctive medieval household and its transformation over a thousand years. Ancient societies lacked the concept of the family as a moral unit and displayed an extraordinary variety of living arrangements, from the huge palaces of the rich to the hovels of the slaves. Not until the seventh and eighth centuries did families take on a more standard form as a result of the congruence of material circumstances, ideological pressures, and the force of cultural norms. By the eleventh century, families had acquired a characteristic kinship organization first visible among elites and then spreading to other classes. From an indifferent network of descent through either male or female lines evolved the new concept of patrilineage, or descent and inheritance through the male line. For the first ti

Author

Herlihy, David

Publisher

Harvard University, Department of Sanskrit & Indian Studies

Published

1985

Language

EN

ISBN

9780674038608

Subjects

History, Sociology, Gender Studies

Rating

3.41 / 5 (30 ratings)

Updated

2026-03-14