Böcker av Paul Edward Dutton

Micro Middle Ages brings together five microhistorical case studies focusing on small or seemingly inconsequential evidence that leads to broader conclusions about medieval history and the way we do and understand history in general. Paul Dutton provides an overview of microhistorical approaches and theorizes about its use in pre-modern history. As opposed to studying history "from above" or history "from below," Dutton shows the advantages for historians of doing history "from the inside out," starting from some single, overlooked, but potentially knowable thing, delving deep inside, and then reattaching it to its time and place. Such an approach has one abiding advantage: its insistence on being grounded in the particularity of the evidence. The book highlights what the microhistorical is, its conceptual and practical challenges. Dutton argues that the attention to the micro has always been with us and is a constitutive, cognitive part of who we are as human beings.

Surveying the sleep of kings and the status of royal dreams from the classical period to the ninth century, this study examines individual dreams and the political disruption that informs them. It presents Charlemagne's lust, demons and archangels, and Charles the Fat's journey through an otherworld to an uncertain constitutional future.

"I've been teaching the 'Age of Charlemagne' for 25 years. Thanks to Paul Dutton, I finally have the book I need to make this age come alive." - Charles R. Bowlus, Professor Emeritus, University of Arkansas at Little Rock