Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Did Charlemagne have a Private Life?
- 2 Bones for Historians: Putting the Body back into Biography
- 3 ‘Carriers of the Truth’: Writing the Biographies of Anglo-Saxon Female Saints
- 4 Alfred and his Biographers: Images and Imagination
- 5 Re-Reading King Æthelred the Unready
- 6 Writing the Biography of Eleventh-Century Queens
- 7 The Flemish Contribution to Biographical Writing in England in the Eleventh Century
- 8 The Conqueror's Earliest Historians and the Writing of his Biography
- 9 Secular Propaganda and Aristocratic Values: The Autobiographies of Count Fulk le Réchin of Anjou and Count William of Poitou, Duke of Aquitaine
- 10 Reading the Signs: Bernard of Clairvaux and his Miracles
- 11 Arnulf's Mentor: Geoffrey of Léves, Bishop of Chartres
- 12 The Empress Matilda as a Subject for Biography
- 13 The Gesta Stephani
- 14 Writing the Biography of Roger of Howden, King's Clerk and Chronicler
- 15 Writing a Biography in the Thirteenth Century: The Construction and Composition of the ‘History of William Marshal’
- 16 The Strange Case of the Missing Biographies: The Lives of the Plantagenet Kings of England 1154–1272
- Index
Preface
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Did Charlemagne have a Private Life?
- 2 Bones for Historians: Putting the Body back into Biography
- 3 ‘Carriers of the Truth’: Writing the Biographies of Anglo-Saxon Female Saints
- 4 Alfred and his Biographers: Images and Imagination
- 5 Re-Reading King Æthelred the Unready
- 6 Writing the Biography of Eleventh-Century Queens
- 7 The Flemish Contribution to Biographical Writing in England in the Eleventh Century
- 8 The Conqueror's Earliest Historians and the Writing of his Biography
- 9 Secular Propaganda and Aristocratic Values: The Autobiographies of Count Fulk le Réchin of Anjou and Count William of Poitou, Duke of Aquitaine
- 10 Reading the Signs: Bernard of Clairvaux and his Miracles
- 11 Arnulf's Mentor: Geoffrey of Léves, Bishop of Chartres
- 12 The Empress Matilda as a Subject for Biography
- 13 The Gesta Stephani
- 14 Writing the Biography of Roger of Howden, King's Clerk and Chronicler
- 15 Writing a Biography in the Thirteenth Century: The Construction and Composition of the ‘History of William Marshal’
- 16 The Strange Case of the Missing Biographies: The Lives of the Plantagenet Kings of England 1154–1272
- Index
Summary
The genesis of this volume was an evening telephone conversation between the late Timothy Reuter and myself which concluded that a conference must be organised in Frank Barlow's honour. The subject of the conference chose itself instantly. Frank has published a vast amount during his career, including numerous editions of texts and a textbook still in print fifty years after it was first published. But the writing of biography has been such a significant and influential part of his work that simply no other topic was appropriate. If memory serves me right, it was Tim who was the driving force at the start. His tragic death so soon after the conference started to be planned deprived it of all that his imagination and energy would have brought to it. It also took from him the opportunity to pay tribute to a historian whom he had long admired deeply – I well remember the first conversation we ever had, on a Paddington-bound train in the early 1970s, after the interviews for a lectureship at Exeter in which Tim was successful and I was not, in which he expressed to me this admiration warmly and fulsomely. He and Frank thus became colleagues until Frank's retirement in 1976 and remained friends thereafter. While this volume is dedicated to Frank Barlow, it must also be dedicated to the memory of Tim Reuter.
The organisation of the conference, entitled ‘The Limits of Medieval Biography’ and held at the University of Exeter between 10 and 12 July in 2003, was taken forward with exemplary efficiency by Julia Crick and Sarah Hamilton.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Writing Medieval Biography, 750–1250Essays in Honour of Frank Barlow, pp. vii - xPublisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2006