Text and the World

<em>The Text and the World</em> is a study of an exceptionally interesting primary source - the <em>Henrykow Book</em> - and of the local and regional world which that source reflected and helped shape. The source is a history of the Cistercian monastery in Henrykow about forty kilometers to the south of Wroclaw in the duchy of Silesia produced in the monastery in two sections-one completed soon after 1268 the other soon after 1310-and redacted into a single codex in the second or third decade of the fourteenth century. The earlier part of the <em>Book</em> is the work of Peter the third abbot of the monastery while the continuation was written by an anonymous monk at the same community possibly a later abbot by the same name. <p/>The <em>Henrykow Book</em> offers an exceptionally rich introduction to a number of subjects currently of major interest to medieval historians. It is interesting as a literary work as an instance of forensic rhetoric and as a type of legal argument; as an instance of biography and (implicit) autobiography. It draws on and is an example of the relationship between memory and writing and acts as a record of lordship power economy the law social groups communities and institutions in the local and regional world of the time. <em>The Text and the World</em> explores each of these major subjects contextualized with the <em>Henrykow Book</em>'s contemporary diplomatic evidence.<br>