Review

Textbooks, Readers, and References

The author's goal in this book is to emphasize the basic material realities of everyday life, from the physical nature of beds to the frequency of personal hygiene. Singman lays out the stages of a person's life-cycle—birth, childhood, marriage and old age in the context of the medieval social structure. At the heart of the book are the chapters on material culture—clothing (both under and outer garments), houses, and food and diet. These sections are packed with information, including detailed drawings of how clothes were constructed and discussions of how to start a fire from scratch, and how to "malt" grain prior to making ale or beer. Interspersed amongst these factual data are comments that relate conditions in the Middle Ages to life today. Singman points out, for example, that hose were loose and given to bunching—"a far cry from the tights we usually see in period films" (p. 38). Elsewhere, when stressing the inadequacy of medieval heating arrangements he notes that "no one who has spend a winter's night in an unheated cottage will wonder why medieval people preferred to have heavy curtains around their beds" (p. 47).	1
In the next four chapters the author looks at daily life in four different environments—a village, a castle, a monastery and a town. Rather than discussing the general characteristics of each environment, Singman prefers to zero in on one particular place that is seen as typical to some extent of the whole group. For village life he uses the well-documented accounts of the English open-field village of Cuxham at the end of the thirteenth century to discuss agrarian techniques, buildings, the range of personnel, and issues of labor and leisure. The result is a complex, nuanced account of that particular place, but one that gives the student no sense of what it would have been like to live in a different village environment such as a hamlet surrounded by fields that were not cultivated in strips. Similarly with the discussion of monadic life, the chosen example is the Benedictine monastery of Cluny around 1100, which is presented in considerable depth, but inevitably the new religious orders of the twelfth century get short shrift. It is pointed out, for example, that the Cistercians differed from other monks in permitting no underwear, but nothing is said about how their churches and daily life differed from those of the Cluniac monks. In each of these chapters considerable attention is paid to the structure and function of buildings. Thus in the chapter on town life, where the example is Paris, Singman discusses how the form of the townhouse changed in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and in the chapter dealing with Dover castle he points out the significance of its fortifications. He is also aware of the social structure in each place, detailing the life of the garrison foot soldier as well as that of the knight. Within the town, he looks at university students, friars, and tradesmen like bakers as well as the wealthy merchants.	2
At the end of the book is a useful glossary of technical terms and appendices dealing with games, recipes and music. The book is enlivened with line drawings based on contemporary illustrations. Apart from the use of the debatable word "feudalism" in the introductory paragraph, the author is well aware of and accurately reports current scholarship. The book would be eminently suitable for use in a high school or first year college course. Individual chapters, or portions thereof, could be used to illustrate a particular point or a literary text, since each part of the book stands easily by itself. Finally for anyone interested in teaching medieval history, the book provides a mine of information.	3
Mavis Mate University of Oregon

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