Aaron Gurevich has long been considered one of the world's leading medievalists and a pioneer in the field of historical anthropology. This book brings together eleven of his most important essays—many difficult to find and some never before available in English. Gurevich's writing, while informed by the history of mentalities as practiced by the French school of Le Goff and Duby, reflects a broader view of European culture outside France. He rejects reductionist concepts and operates with a total view of culture, using a wide range of sources—legal as well as ecclesiastical, popular as well as learned, oral and visual as well as literary. This collection amply demonstrates this breadth of Gurevich's work and highlights his ability to synthesize historical, anthropological, and semiotic approaches to culture. Especially valuable are pieces such as Gurevich's essay Wealth and Gift-Bestowal Among the Ancient Scandinavians, about the importance of gift exchange in the medieval world. One of the first studies for this practice, this classic essay has for years been unavailable. Other pieces range from the deities and heroes of Germanic poetry to the image of the Beyond in the Middle Ages.

Informed by the history of mentalities as practised by the French school of Le Goff and Duby, Aaron Gurevich seeks to reconstruct a tapestry of European civilization and everyday life, synthesizing historical, anthropological and semiotic approaches to culture.

Since its invention by Renaissance humanists, the myth of the “Middle Ages” has held a uniquely important place in the Western historical imagination. Whether envisioned as an era of lost simplicity or a barbaric nightmare, the medieval past has always served as a mirror for modernity. This book gives an eye-opening account of the ways various political and intellectual projects—from nationalism to the discipline of anthropology—have appropriated the Middle Ages for their own ends. Deploying an interdisciplinary toolkit, author K. Patrick Fazioli grounds his analysis in contemporary struggles over power and identity in the Eastern Alps, while also considering the broader implications for scholarly research and public memory.

Status and gender are two closely associated concepts within medieval society, which tended to view both notions as binary: elite or low status, married or single, holy or cursed, male or female, or as complementary and cohesive as multiple parts of a societal whole. With contributions on topics ranging from medieval leprosy to boyhood behaviors, this interdisciplinary collection highlights the various ways “status” can be interpreted relative to gender, and what these two interlocked concepts can reveal about the construction of gendered identities in the Middle Ages.

"Mr. Bloch has attempted to establish what he calls a 'literary anthropology.' The project is important and ambitious. It seems to me that Mr. Bloch has completely achieved this ambition." –Michel Foucault "Bloch's Study is a genuinely interdisciplinary one, bringing together elements of history, ethnology, philology, philosophy, economics and literature, with the undoubted ambition of generating a new synthesis which will enable us to read the Middle Ages in a different light. Stated simply, and in terms which do justice neither to the density nor the subtlety of his argument, Bloch's thesis is this: that medieval society perceived itself in terms of a vertical mode of descent from origins. This model is articulated etymologically in medieval theories of grammar and language, and is consequently reflected in historical and theological writings; it is also latent in the genealogical structure of the aristocratic family as it began to be organized in France in the twelfth century, and is made manifest in such systems of signs as heraldry and the adoption of patronymns. . . . It is an ingenious and compelling synthesis which no medievalist, even on this side of the Atlantic, can afford to ignore." –Nicholas Mann, Times Literary Supplement