Item Condition: Used; Very Good
During the last generation a vast amount of research
has been done on all aspects of the late Middle Ages in
England. and this has radically modified previous views:
yet no general synthesis has hitherto been attempted.
Moreover, the period has suffered undue neglect and
disparagement in comparison with the preceding 'Age
of Faith' or the subsequent triumphs of Elizabethan
England. But our generation may well find a particular
interest in an England afflicted by war and disillusion-
ment- from which it eventually recovered; and the late
Middle Age in England was a time not merely of violence
and decay but of growth and creativeness. Its Canterbury
Tales and its Paston Letters, its ballads and its carols, its
Perpendicular churches and its unsurpassed wood-carv-
ing, are still an essential part of English culture. It was
an age of decisive importance for the future- the time of
a developing Parliament and common law, of a govern-
ment learning how to co-operate with the governed, of
the rise to political and social importance of the middie
classes, of a new pride in the English tongue, English
ways, and English nationality.