Roadworks by Valerie Allen

Roadworks by Valerie Allen

This collection of essays offers an interdisciplinary study of roads and wayfinding in medieval England, Wales and Scotland. It looks afresh at the relationship between the road as a material condition of daily life and the formation of local and national communities, arguing that the business of road maintenance, road travel and wayfinding constitutes social bonds. Setting Britain's thoroughfares against the backdrop of the extant Roman road system, it argues for a technique of road construction and care that is distinctively medieval and challenges the long-held picture of a medieval Britain lacking in technological sophistication. This accessible collection draws out the imaginative, symbolic and cultural significance of the road. It synthesizes information on medieval road terminology, roads as rights of passage and the road as an idea as much as a physical entity. Individual essays look afresh at sources for the study of the medieval English road system, legal definitions of the highway, road-breaking and road-mending, wayfinding and the architecture of the street and its role in popular urban government. The book also explores subjects including hermits and the road as spiritual metaphor, royal itineraries, pilgrimage roads, roads in medieval English romances, English river transport, roads in medieval Wales and roads in the Anglo-Scottish border zone. This book will appeal to scholars of early and late medieval Britain in all disciplines. Its theoretical foundations will also ensure an audience among scholars of cultural studies, especially those in urban studies, transport studies and economic history.

‘The editors are to be congratulated on the strength of the essays and the way they complement each other despite the diversity of approaches taken by their authorsThe reader also benefits from the clarity and uniformity of presentation, and the generally very high standard of copy editing. More illustrations would have been welcome for a subject that cries out for maps, but this is a small gripe about a book that offers so much to all of those interested in a topic that unites different disciplines.’
The Journal of transport history vol 37 (2), Stephen Mileson, Victoria County History, Oxfordshire

‘‘Roadworks’ represents a major contribution to our understanding of roads in the medieval period. Its thirteen chapters cover a wide range of sources and methodologies, and – considering that much of the major literature on the subject is very old – its revisionist position is very welcome.’
Owen Davies, University of Hertfordshire, Landscapes, June 2017

‘It falls beyond the scope of this review to rehearse the specific arguments made by each of these thirteen fine essays, but each and every one of them sheds important light on British roads (and rivers, bridges, forests and coastlines) and how they ‘inscribe the wayfarer as homo viator in ways often more fundamental than how human technology imposes meaning on roads’ (p.3). Collectively they thus make an important contribution to the emerging field of medieval infrastructures and demonstrate its relevance to numerous subfields and medieval studies more broadly.’
Guy Geltner, Universiteit van Amsterdam, JRG, Vol 131, No 2, 2018

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Valerie Allen is Professor of English at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY

Ruth Evans is Professor of English at Saint Louis University

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780719085062
ISBN 10	0719085063
Title	Roadworks
Author	Valerie Allen
Series	Manchester Medieval Literature And Culture
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Manchester University Press
Year published	2016-01-01
Number of pages	384
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.