This study of the nature of frontiers and frontier society in the middle ages focuses on the frontiers between England and Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, between Castile and Grenada and on the Elbe, examining the consequences for frontier societies of being located in areas of cross-cultural contact, and often confrontation. Hostile frontiers responded to endemic warfare with a high level of militarization. Institutions, expectations and even local family structures are shown to have been products of an environment of long-term and ubiquitous fighting. But, devices also developed in frontier societies for mediation, arbitration and negotiation. Frontiers constituted areas of cultural contact and cultural clash. Interaction between different religions, laws, languages and mores was often hostile, but could sometimes be flexible and these responses are reflected, for example, in the literature and poetry of the areas involved.
- ISBN10 0198228813
- ISBN13 9780198228813
- Publish Date 21 December 1989
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 1 April 2009
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Oxford University Press
- Imprint Clarendon Press
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 400
- Language English