The End of the Middle Ages: Essays and Questions in History

Robinson, A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances), 1857-19Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.3
Word count
663K words
Chapters
67

Tags

English Originals World History Historical ReappraisalEuropean HistorySocial ChangeMedieval StudiesHistorical CommentaryAcademic StudyIntellectual CommentaryEpochal Transition

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.The End of the Middle Ages: Essays and Questions in History by A. Mary F. RobinsonAuthor: Robinson, A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances), 1857-1944,Language: English, Class: DG: History: General and Eastern Hemisphere: Italy, Vatican City, Malta, Release Date: Nov 7, 2016

Editor's review

This is a collection of historical essays and questions by A. Mary F. Robinson on the end of the Middle Ages, a public-domain e-book from Project Gutenberg. Its value lies in not resolving the large question of how the Middle Ages ended with a single narrative, but in opening it up through several topical essays and questions, showing the complexity and multiple threads of historical transition. For readers, the highlight is the essayistic pace of argument: the author poses questions and observations rather than offering textbook conclusions, which suits readers willing to follow the reasoning and accept open-ended conclusions. As for reading situations, it works best for thematic reading or book-club discussion, one essay at a time, leaving room for reflection and doubt. Note that the original is in English, the prose follows the essay-writing habits of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and it involves specific historical events and figures, so it can feel jumpy without background knowledge. It is not for readers seeking a general-history framework or exam points. Overall, this is a discussion-oriented work for readers interested in the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and in historical writing itself, to be read closely.

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Reading tips

  1. Read one essay at a time, then restate in your own words the questions and threads the author raises.
  2. Prepare a timeline to roughly place the events and figures mentioned, reducing the sense of jumping.
  3. Read alongside other general histories of the late Middle Ages and compare the author's questions with textbook narratives.
  4. In a book club, discuss each essay's questions first, then evaluate the argument, without rushing to a unified conclusion.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
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FAQ

Is this book suitable for history beginners? Not really for complete beginners. It consists of topical essays and questions and presumes a general familiarity with late medieval history; without background, the threads can feel jumpy. Beginners should read a general-history overview first, then return to this discussion-oriented work for greater benefit.
What does "Questions" in the title mean? It refers to the author's approach of posing questions about the large problem of how the Middle Ages ended: rather than attributing the transition to a single event or cause, she raises questions from several topics and opens discussion. Readers should treat each essay as a historical inquiry, not a chapter awaiting a standard answer.
Why don't the essays read continuously? Because the book is a collection of essays and questions that are relatively independent and not arranged in general-history order. Don't force narrative continuity; read by interest, one essay at a time, or build an overall sense yourself by linking the events on a timeline.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Robinson, A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances), 1857-19 Author

A. Mary F. Robinson (Agnes Mary Frances Robinson, 1857–19) was a late nineteenth-century English poet, biographer and literary critic. Public sources on her life are limited. Two of her works are held here. The first, Emily Brontë, belongs to the Victorian tradition of literary biography: it traces Brontë's life and writings in fine detail and has value both as biographical documentation and literary criticism. The second, The End of the Middle Ages: Essays and Questions in History, gathers historical essays and questions, showing that her interests reached beyond poetry and biography into historical writing and cultural criticism. Her prose is elegant and carefully researched, with the unhurried quality of nineteenth-century humanistic essays; students of Brontë and Victorian literature frequently cite her.