Negotiation and Resistance : : Peasant Agency in High Medieval France / / Constance Brittain Bouchard.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Cornell University Press Complete eBook-Package 2022
• VerfasserIn: Bouchard, Constance Brittain,
• Place / Publishing House: Ithaca, NY : : Cornell University Press, , [2022]; ©2022
• Year of Publication: 2022
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (186 p.) :; 1 map

In Negotiation and Resistance, Constance Brittain Bouchard challenges familiar depictions of the peasantry as an undifferentiated mass of impoverished and powerless workers. Peasants in eleventh- and twelfth-century France had far more scope for action, self-determination, and resistance to oppressive treatment—that is, for agency—than they are usually credited with having.Through innovative readings of documents collected in medieval cartularies, Bouchard finds that while peasants lived hard and impoverished lives, they were neither silent nor helpless. This era in French history, she contends, was a time in which peasants were able to negotiate, individually or collectively, to better their position, present cases in court, and make their own decisions about such fundamental issues as inheritance or choice of marriage partner.Negotiation and Resistance upends the received view of this period in French history as one in which lords dealt harshly and without opposition toward subservient peasants, offering numerous examples of peasants standing up against those who would dominate them.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- Abbreviations -- Introduction -- Chapter 1 Peasant Status and the Meanings of Serfdom -- Chapter 2 Peasants, Property, and Payments -- Chapter 3 Peasants, Religion, and the Church -- Chapter 4 Peasants, New Towns, and Communes -- Chapter 5 Peasant Agency -- Conclusion -- Bibliography -- Index