On a spring day in April--sometime in the waning years of the 14th century--29 travelers set out for Canterbury on a pilgrimage to the shrine of Saint Thomas Beckett. Among them is a knight, a monk, a prioress, a plowman, a miller, a merchant, a clerk, and an oft-widowed wife from Bath. Travel is arduous and wearing; to maintain their spirits, this band of pilgrims entertains each other with a series of tall tales that span the spectrum of literary...

"Cast out of the royal court by Eleanor of Aquitaine, deemed too coarse and rough-hewn for marriage or courtly life, seventeen-year-old Marie de France is sent to England to be the new prioress of an impoverished abbey, its nuns on the brink of starvation and beset by disease. At first taken aback by the severity of her new life, Marie finds focus and love in collective life with her singular and mercurial sisters. In this crucible, Marie steadily...

Medieval Philosophy: A Multicultural Reader comprises a comparative, multicultural reading of the four main traditions of the medieval period including extensive sections on Jewish, Islamic, Latin and Greco-Roman traditions. The book also includes an initial 'predecessors' section which explains to students how to bridge the intellectual gap between Aristotle to Augustine - a span of nearly 800 years. It presents excerpts from Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus...

This eight-volume series, covering the history of Russia and its immediate neighbors from the emergence of Rus through to the present day, is written for students and non-specialist readers. A major strength of the series its the space it devotes to the less familiar histories of Rus and Russia before the time of Peter the Great. This eagerly awaited study--the first in modern times by western scholars, explores one of the definitive processes int...

"A group of pilgrims are travelling together for five days from London to Canterbury. On the way, each pilgrim has to tell a story to keep the others amused. Some stories are happy, and some are sad. But they all have a message, and we can learn from them."--P. [4] of cover.

Combines location sequences and animation to show the building of a Gothic cathedral. Begins with a tour of Chartres, Reims, Amiens, Bourges, Beauvais, Notre Dame de Paris, Laon, and the Royal Abbey Church of St. Denis. Discusses life in the medieval era and how churches were a center of life.