Negotiation and Resistance
Peasant Agency in High Medieval France

Constance Brittain Bouchard (Author)

9781501766572

Hardback, published 15 December 2022

186 pages, 1 map - 1 Maps
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.1 cm, 0.454 kg

Negotiation and Resistance will be invaluable in the undergraduate classroom as a powerful antidote to the all-too-frequent image of the generic peasant who operated as part of some medieval hive mind. Accessibly and engagingly written, this book effectively humanizes and concretizes people who often appear too distant to perceive clearly, while challenging some of the easy frameworks through which the Middle Ages are conventionally understood.

In Negotiation and Resistance, Constance Brittain Bouchard challenges familiar depictions of the peasantry as an undifferentiated mass of impoverished and powerless workers. Peasants in eleventh- and twelfth-century France had far more scope for action, self-determination, and resistance to oppressive treatment—that is, for agency—than they are usually credited with having. Through innovative readings of documents collected in medieval cartularies, Bouchard finds that while peasants lived hard, impoverished lives, they were able to negotiate, individually or collectively, to better their position, present cases in court, and make their own decisions about such fundamental issues as inheritance or choice of marriage partner. Negotiation and Resistance upends the received view of this period in French history as one in which lords dealt harshly and without opposition toward subservient peasants, offering numerous examples of peasants standing up for themselves.