2018/03/01 by Elisabeth Salter · 1 voice
Arts and Humanities · #Reformation and Early Modern Christianity
paper · doi:10.1353/emw.2018.0002
openalex publication_date 2018/03/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/04/06
Over the last fifty years, medieval and early modern cultural history has witnessed an important shift towards exploring the life stories of those individuals who did not belong to the cultural or political elite.This shift was foreshadowed by pioneering scholars such as Eileen Power, who was publishing works devoted to exploring the "labours and passions of the flesh and blood" of the "quite ordinary person" in the 1920s. 1 It is now acknowledged that not only is it possible to investigate the lives of those people who formed the majority of the population, it is also important and valuable for our understandings of the past. 2 Moreover, studying the lives of premodern women is a crucial element in this project of historical reconstruction.