Law and Language in the Middle Ages investigates the relationship between law and legal practice from the linguistic perspective, exploring not only how legal language expresses and advances power relations but also how the language of law legitimates power.

Law | Book | Culture in the Middle Ages takes a detailed view on the role of manuscripts and the written word in legal cultures, spanning the medieval period across western and central Europe.

A comprehensive and wide-ranging account of the interrelationship between law and literature in Anglo-Saxon, Medieval and Tudor England.

As broad in scope as the interests of its honoree, this volume brings together leading historians of early English and continental law to pay tribute to Lisi Oliver. The essays gathered here range from the earliest laws of the kings of Kent in the seventh century to the reception of Old English law in the seventeenth. Interested both in how law was made and the ways in which it was applied, the contributors explore the careers of such prominent legislators as Alfred the Great and Wulfstan of York while also examining issues of gender, social status and textual transmission. This volume will be essential reading for anyone interested in the history of law, the legal culture of Anglo-Saxon England, and the emergence of modern concepts of self and statehood in the early middle ages.

The first systematic examination of the expectations people had of the law in the middle ages.

In 500, the legal order in Europe was structured around ancient customs, social practices and feudal values. By 1500, the effects of demographic change, new methods of farming and economic expansion had transformed the social and political landscape and had wrought radical change upon legal practices and systems throughout Western Europe. A Cultural History of Law in the Middle Ages explores this change and the rich and varied encounters between Christianity and Roman legal thought which shaped the period. Evolving from a combination of religious norms, local customs, secular legislations, and Roman jurisprudence, medieval law came to define an order that promoted new forms of individual and social representation, fostered the political renewal that heralded the transition from feudalism to the Early Modern state and contributed to the diffusion of a common legal language. Drawing upon a wealth of textual and visual sources, A Cultural History of Law in the Middle Ages presents essays that examine key cultural case studies of the period on the themes of justice, constitution, codes, agreements, arguments, property and possession, wrongs, and the legal profession.

Grammar and Grammarians in the Early Middle Ages is the only book in this field which examines linguistics in the Middle Ages from the standpoint of both the medievalist and the historian of linguistics. Primary source material along with previously unpublished texts are used extensively with all foreign texts translated into English, and are listed in a useful bibliography to aid further study. Historical surveys, author studies and introductions to medieval grammatical terminology are also included to help clarify the historical context of the study. The volume will prove invaluable reading and an important reference work for those studying historical linguistics, for medieval and cultural historians, and to all who are interested in the intellectual life and literature of medieval Europe.