This is a topic I am interested in reading about, since it seems that in pop-culture there are 2 popular ways of viewing the middle ages, a romanticized view where people lived rustic, pastoral lives, or the "dark ages" view that it was a uniquely violent, backwards and superstitious time. What is a book that cuts through the nonsense and shows how things actually were?
by Mindless_Giraffe6887
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have you read any of ken follett’s kingsbridge series?????
Ken Follett’s Kingsbridge series is good for this. Although it’s not an anthropological study, you get a good glimpse into their lifestyles over several centuries.
I would highly recommend The Other Side of History: Daily Life in the Ancient World. It’s a lecture series available on audible. It goes through the daily lives of ordinary people throughout history starting with Neanderthals. I found it fascinating.
C’était entre les deux.
Voir toutes les oeuvres de George Duby
The Brother Cadfael series.
Hild and Menewood by Nicola Griffith!!! It has a ton of plot, but also a lot of vivid descriptions of day to day life. And Hild herself is a fabulous protagonist—her emotional development is incredible, and the entire concept of a “king’s seer” who’s actually just really good at pattern recognition is fascinating. There are also a lot of really strong and memorable secondary characters.
I think overall it’s sort of a mix of the views you’ve described—there is pastoral life, and the narrative is very interested in the tasks of daily living and how and where people got the resources they needed, but it also captures the inherent instability of a political system where a dozen or so petty kings are always warring with each other.
The Time Traveller’s Guide to Medieval England by Ian Mortimer is a down to earth guide of the lives of everday folk – what they ate, how they worshipped, what they wore and what they did for fun. Things to expect if you walked into a medieval village or home.
I recently read For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy on My Little Pain by Victoria MacKenzie and it was amazing, especially if you’re interested in religion. It focuses on two women who claimed to have seen visions of Jesus Christ and how they reacted differently. Although the book is fictional, the two women were real. It has inspired me to read Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe’s original accounts of their experiences.
I’d also recommend The Canterbury Tales and Piers Plowman, two works that were actually written in the middle ages. The Decameron and the Lais of Marie of France were also written in that time. You can also check out Arthurian legends—there are oodles of these, many versions. I’m currently reading Tolkien’s translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and it’s amazing.
TL;DR: Go straight to the source!
Down the Common by Ann Baer is a great read. It’s a year in the life of a medieval peasant woman, just going about her business.
If you’re open to scifi with time travel involved, Connie Willis’ Doomsday Book is another one that has a lot of detail about life in an English village around the time the Black Plague arrived.
Non-fiction, The Year 1000: What Life Was Like At the Turn of the First Millennium gives an overview of a medieval year showing daily life activities month-by-month. It’s a fun easy read, and really informative.
Name of the Rose
This is non fiction but Barbara Tuchman’s A Distant Mirror is wonderful if you are fascinated by details of the middle ages.
Life in a Medieval Village and Life in a Medieval City are both two nonfiction books about the topic that I enjoyed.
A Distance Mirror by Barbara Tuchman
I think “how things actually were” is a little tough to satisfy but, if one believes Wikipedia characterizations, consider Sigrid Undset’s “Kristin Lavransdatter.” [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kristin_Lavransdatter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kristin_Lavransdatter)
, consider Sigrid Undset’s “Kristin Lavransdatter.”
Doomsday Book by Willis. Time travel fiction that excels at quotidian
Read ‘doomsday book’ by Connie Willis
Last year I read “Montaillou: Cathars and Catholics in a French Village 1294-1324” – which is a very interesting account of the lives of various people in the village, drawing on detailed records that were kept by the Inquisition at the time.
The Middle Ages are usually said to last until the 15th century. The non-fiction book I’m recommending is about events in the 16th century, but I think would still be of interest to you.
The Cheese and the Worms, by Carlo Ginzburg.
It’s about an Italian miller who invents his own religion, combining Christianity, medieval mythology, and his own original ideas. Eventually he is prosecuted by the Roman Inquisition. It’s both scholarly and easy to read.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cheese_and_the_Worms
“…how things actually were” could be tough to satisfy but I enjoyed, and Wikipedia (for what that is worth to you) has praise regarding the accuracy of, Sigrid Undset’s “Kristin Lavransdatter.”
YA book, Catherine Called Birdy: Karen Cushman. Very entertaining. No idea if it’s “accurate” but it’s neither too romantic or too dark. Just a really good read. Also now there’s a movie.
Matrix by Lauren Groff. A surprisingly compulsive read about a medieval abbey.
a connecticut yankee in king arthur’s court
How to Survive in Medieval England by Toni Mount – it feels like a guidebook to visiting or living in those times, it covers the essentials, how things are different for different genders and classes, etc. Really good.
I did study medieval era, I have a master degree about it and I can’t recommend you enough Medioevo sul naso. Occhiali, bottoni e altre invenzioni medievali, by Chiara Frugoni.
I don’t know if it was translated to english but it is available at least in italian and french. It is one of the best book I’ve read about how was Middle Ages.
Barry Unsworth’s *Morality Play*
Umberto Eco’s *The Name of the Rose*
and then Giovanni Boccaccio’s *Decameron* , written during that time, so probably more reliable than books written now (though, please, skip the Netflix series supposedly adapted from it: terrible!)
A Distant Mirror by Barbara Tuchman is well regarded.