Abstract
From the mid-fourteenth to the end of the fifteenth century, work arguably shaped social identity to a much greater extent than in either earlier or later times. We know that labor ordinances issued in the wake of the 1348 Black Plague not only restricted wages but also demanded the textual encoding of identity in the form of letters patent issued for migrating laborers among villages. Sumptuary laws determined how a person could dress and what could be eaten depending on what the person did. Estates satire criticized all classes of society for failing to fulfill their professional duties, and hence their obligations to the rest of society. The equation of what you did with who you were was an almost inviolate one (unless, of course, you were a woman; in which case, who you were was likely to be dependent on what your husband did).
Keywords
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Aaron Gurevich, “Historical Anthropology and the Science of History,” in The Historical Anthropology of the Middle Ages, ed. Jana Howlett (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 1992), p. 6 [3–20].
On Langland, see Written Work: Langland, Labor, and Authorship, ed. Steven Justice and Kathryn Kerby-Fulton (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997). On fourteenth-century labor, both intellectual and physical, see the essays collected in The Problem of Labour in Fourteenth-Century England, ed. James Bothwell, PJ.P Goldberg and IM. Ormrod (York: York Medieval Press, 2000).
Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), p. 290. For the economic arguments about post-work culture, see Jeremy Rifkin, The End of Work: The Decline of the Global Labour Force and the Dawn of the Post-Market Era (New York: Putnam, 1994). For further discussion of the term ‘immaterial labor’, see also Maurizio Lazzarato, “Immaterial Labor,” in Radical Thought in Italy: A Potential Politics, ed. Michael Hardt and Paolo Virno (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), pp. 133–47; and Michael Hardt, Antonio Negri, and Ronald A.T. Judy, “Dossier: Scattered Speculations on Value,” Boundary 2 26 (1999): 75–100, esp. pp. 93–98.
A useful discussion of the development of the word ‘labor’ is Lucien Febvre, “Travail: Evolution d’un mot et d’une idée,” Journal de psychologie normale et pathologique 41.1 (1948): 19–28. On the distinction between work and labor, see G. Keel, Laborare und Operari: Verneudungs und Bedentrengs geschichte zweier Verben fur “arbeiten” im Lateinischen und Galloromanischen, Inaugural-Dissertation der Philosoph. Fak. der Universitat Bern, St. Gall, 1952.
Sigmund Freud, “The Ego and the Id,” in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, 24 vols., ed. and trans. James Strachey et al. (London: Hogarth Press, 1953–74), 19: 23.
Georg Groddeck, The World of Man, trans. V.M.E. Collins (New York: Funk and Wagnells, 1951), pp. 221–22.
The connections between labor, slavery, and need or service is explored in the volume The Work of Work: Servitude, Slavery, and Labor in Medieval England, ed. Allen J. Frantzen and Douglas Moffat (Glasgow: Cruithne Press, 1994).
Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), p. 81.
Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, 3 vols., trans. Ben Fowkes (New York: Penguin, 1976), 1: 290.
Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, ed. Dirk J. Struik, trans. Martin Milligan (New York: International Publishers, 1964), p. 108.
The ancient attitudes toward labor are well covered in Arthur T. Geoghegan, The Attitude Towards Labor in Early Christianity and Ancient Culture, The Catholic University of America Studies in Christian Antiquity 6 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1945).
See Paul Freedman, Images of the Medieval Peasant (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999).
See, for example, Freedman, Images; Charles Verlinden, L’Esclavage dans l’Europe médiévale, vol. 1, Péninsule Ibérique, France (Brugge: De Tempel, 1955), vol. 2, Italie, Colonies italiennes du Levant, Levant latin, Empire byzantin, Rijkuniversiteit te Gent, Werken uitgegeven door de Faculteit van de Letteren en Wijsbegeerte 162 (Ghent: Rijkuniversiteit te Gent, 1977); Ruth Mazo Karras, Slavery and Society in Medieval Scandinavia, Yale Historical Publications 135 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988); Karras, Common Women: Prostitution and Sexuality in Medieval England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996); Steven A. Epstein, Speaking of Slavery: Color, Ethnicity, and Human Bondage in Italy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001); Bronislaw Geremak, “The Marginal Man,” in Medieval Callings, ed. Jacques Le Goff, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), pp. 347–73; and Jacques Le Goff, Time, Work, and Culture in the Middle Ages, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), pp. 58–121.
See Birgit van den Hoven, Work in Ancient and Medieval Thought: Ancient Philosophers, Medieval Monks and Theologians and Their Concept of Work, Occupations and Technology, Dutch Monographs on Ancient History and Archaeology 14 (Amsterdam: J.C. Gieben, 1996), p. 141.
Jacques de Vitry, sermo LXI (Ad agricolas et alios operarios), in Analecta novissima Spicilegii Solesmensis altera continuatio, ed. J.B. Pitra (Farnborough, Hants., UK: Gregg, 1967).
A useful study here is William Ovitt, The Restoration of Perfection: Labor and Technology in Medieval Culture (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1987).
Robert Kilwardby, De ortu scientiarum, ed. Albert G. Judy (London: British Academy, 1976), pp. 128–29.
Julius Leopold Pagel, Die Concordanciae des Johannes de Sancto Amando nach eine Berliner und zwei Erfurter Handschriften zum ersten Male herausgegeben (Berlin: Reimer, 1894).
See Karl Polyani, The Great Transformation (Boston: Beacon Press, 1957).
For the work of the Annales school on medieval labor and society, see Febvre, “Travail”; Marc Bloch, La société féodale (Paris: Albin Michel, 1940); Ferdinand Braudel, Civilisation matérielle, économie et capitalisme: XVe–XVIIIe siècle, 3 vols. (Paris: A. Colin, 1979); Jacques Le Goff, Time, Work, and Culture; and Georges Duby, Les trois ordres: ou l’imaginaire du féodalisme (Paris: Gallimard, 1978).
Barbara Hanawalt, The Ties that Bound: Peasant Families in Medieval England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986); and Bruce M.S. Campbell, English Seigniorial Agriculture, 1250–1450 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
Jill Mann, Chaucer and Medieval Estates Satire: The Literature of Social Classes and the General Prologue to the anterbury Tales (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1973).
Editor information
Copyright information
© 2004 Kellie Robertson and Michael Uebel
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Uebel, M., Robertson, K. (2004). Introduction Conceptualizing Labor in the Middle Ages. In: Robertson, K., Uebel, M. (eds) The Middle Ages at Work. The New Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-07552-9_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-07552-9_1
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-73043-8
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-07552-9
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)