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What is 4. Legal text and social context about?

Records of court practice constitute some of the richest and most numerous written sources for the later Middle Ages, echoing the broader documentary revolution of this period. Using these documents as historical sources, however, one needs to take into account their role as text-objects produced and used within the multimedial communicative context of late medieval courts. By prescribing, describing or performing legal practice, these documents translated a, mainly oral, social world into textualized legal discourse. Such discourses, and the documents containing them, were subsequently communicated back to various audiences, in an attempt to reinforce specific scripts of justice as envisioned by the court. Rather than unproblematic reflections of social practices, court records are the physical remains of a socio-legal negotiation over their interpretation.

Publisher

Amsterdam University Press

Published

2022

Language

EN