Carolingian Culture: Emulation and Innovation

by Rosamond McKitterick (Editor)

This volume of specially-commissioned essays takes as its theme the legacy of Rome in Carolingian culture in eighth- and ninth-century Europe. No such comprehensive survey of this kind exists in any language. The book is the more unusual by departing from the customary stress on the concept of renewal to emphasize the enormous creativity and inventiveness of the Franks. Carolingian culture provided the bedrock for the subsequent development of medieval European culture, and this is demonstrated amply by essays that are planned as a series of introductions to the study of each topic.

Genres: History, Medieval, European History, Medieval History, Carolingian, Nonfiction

352 pages, Hardcover

First published November 11, 1993

About the author

Rosamond Deborah McKitterick is one of Britain's foremost medieval historians. Since 1999, she has been Professor of Medieval History at the University of Cambridge where she is a Fellow of Sidney Sussex College. Much of her work focuses on the Frankish kingdoms in the 8th and 9th centuries and uses palaeographical and manuscript studies to illuminate aspects of the political, cultural, intellectual, religious and social history of the early Middle Ages.

From 1951 to 1956 McKitterick lived in Cambridge, England, where her father had a position at Magdalene College. In 1956 she moved with her family to Western Australia where she completed primary and secondary school and completed an honours degree at the University of Western Australia. She holds the degrees of M.A., Ph.D., and Litt.D.

In 1971 she returned to Cambridge University to pursue her career. She was a Fellow of Newnham College, Cambridge and then became a Professorial Fellow of Sidney Sussex. She is also on the Editorial Board of the journal 'Networks and Neighbours'.

She married David John McKitterick, Librarian of Trinity College, Cambridge, and they have one daughter.