Visions of Community in the Pre-Modern World

"This is a stunning collection . . . elegant, magisterial, and persuasive. Visions of Community in the Pre-Modern World contains new and impeccable scholarship in beautifully written and structured essays." —Roberta Frank, Douglas Tracy Smith Professor of English, Yale University  Visions of Community in the Pre-Modern World contains original essays by five leading scholars in the fields of history, art history, and literature on the ways in which communities were imagined and built between the eleventh and sixteenth centuries. These essays, which function as case studies, range geographically from Europe to Africa, the Near East to regions of Latin America. While acknowledging major factors that affect community—such as religious belief, imperial expansion, and warfare—these studies focus on precise examples and moments in the pre-modern world. The contributors reveal the inherent complexity and variety of communities within pre-modern Europe. They offer a powerful argument against sweeping generalizations about the ways in which humans form themselves into groups, and encourage further scholarly research into the ways in which communities are formed and shaped.  

“The essays in Visions of Community offer beautifully nuanced analyses of the ways in which various types of institutional and social identifications intersected and supplemented one another in the premodern period.” -The Sixteenth Century Journal, “The admirable objectives and themes announced in Howe’s introduction are met and illuminated. The malleable device of studying communities historically ways is done in model ways here.” -Renaissance Quarterly

Nicholas Howe is professor of English and Director of the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at Ohio State University. He is the author of Migration and Mythmaking in Anglo-Saxon England, also published by the University of Notre Dame Press.