The secret Middle Ages / Malcolm Jones.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Love, Death and Biscuits -- Magical Metal, Silly Saints and Risible Relics: the Art and Artefacts of Popular Religion -- Licked into Shape: Animal Symbolism -- Why Englishmen Have Tails: Race, Nationality and Monstrosity -- Signs of Infamy: the Iconography of Humiliation and Insult -- The Fool and the Attributes of Folly -- Shoeing the Goose: Proverbs and Proverbial Follies -- Nonsense, Pure and Applied -- Narratives - Heroic and Not So Heroic -- Hearts and Flowers and Parrots: the Iconography of Love -- Who Wears the Trousers: Gender Relations -- Wicked Willies with Wings: Sex and Sexuality -- Tailpiece: the Uses of Scatology -- Conclusion.

"Using the wealth of medieval art, much of it unseen or ignored by museums and art historians, Malcolm Jones paints a compelling picture of the visual environment of the great mass of ordinary people between 1200 and 1500. The picture that emerges is of a civilisation that is both like and unlike our own, one that teems with the richness of life and its contradictions. Unlike most studies of the medieval world, it does not concern itself greatly with religious or aristocratic art but with the products of popular and folk art. Here we find beliefs and traditions rendered memorable by the vivid creative imagination and strong visual culture of the Middle Ages. Love, hatred, crime and punishment, proverbs, heaven on earth, husband-beating - all feature in the jewellery, tableware, illustrations, carvings and textiles of the period." "This book offers a major reassessment of the high medieval period and as such is not only important to specialists, but has much to appeal to the general reader. It is essential reading for medievalists and those interested in the history of language and customs."--BOOK JACKET.