On Tuesday, 8th September at 8pm, Friends of the Library will be proud to present Prof Philippa Maddern looking at families in late-medieval England.
Who’s the Family?
Tales of non-nuclear families and their households in late-medieval England.
How did ordinary people in the years around 1300-1600 arrange their family lives? It’s often said that they lived in nuclear families rather like ours (or like our ideals) - parents committed to a stable marriage, living with their children under one roof. But more recent research suggests that for most of the population - small landholders, working people and the very poor - living in a true nuclear family may have been the exception rather than the rule. Fluid marriage customs, poverty, servanthood, or deaths of family members all caused households easily to dissolve and recombine; and people to move easily between households and relationships.
By following the poignant stories of some of these individuals, recorded in the chruch courts of latemedieval England, I will try to reconstruct the stories of their marriages, family and households.
Prof Philippa Maddern
Tuesday 8 September 2009 at 7:30pm for 8pm Start
Library Meeting Room
Ground Floor, Reid Library
The University of Western Australia
| Members: Free | Non-Members: $5 Donation |
Please note that the ground floor entrance to the Library, nearest to the carpark, will be open from 7.30pm - 7.45pm.
About the Speaker Philippa Maddern is Professor in Medieval History at UWA. She took her BA at the University of Melbourne and read for a D.Phil in fifteenth-century English history at Oxford. She has been teaching and researching medieval history for 35 years (with one year off working as a computer systems programmer!).
