{"id":626,"date":"2007-08-23T01:59:24","date_gmt":"2007-08-23T05:59:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/s265039441.onlinehome.us\/philpaine\/?p=626"},"modified":"2018-08-16T21:37:27","modified_gmt":"2018-08-17T01:37:27","slug":"15176-%c2%a0-norman-f-cantor-the-last-knight-the-twilight-of-the-middle-ages-and-the-birth-of-the-modern-era","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/?p=626","title":{"rendered":"15176.&nbsp;(Norman F. Cantor) The Last Knight: The Twilight of the Middle Ages and the Birth of the Modern Era"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">This short and enter\u00adtain\u00ading account of life in four\u00adteenth cen\u00adtury Eng\u00adland and France uses the life of John of Gaunt to illus\u00adtrate its themes. Can\u00adtor is opin\u00adion\u00adated. He likes to make analo\u00adgies with today\u2019s social insti\u00adtu\u00adtions, pop\u00adu\u00adlar lit\u00ader\u00ada\u00adture, and movies. This makes the book feel \u201cunschol\u00adarly\u201d, but it comes clos\u00ader to the actu\u00adal con\u00adver\u00adsa\u00adtions that his\u00adto\u00adri\u00adans are like\u00adly to hold while dis\u00adcussing John of Gaunt in a pub. It\u201ds the sort of book that should be read by a few friends one evening, then dis\u00adcussed over beer the&nbsp;next.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">There are two atti\u00adtudes that one can hold about a dis\u00adtant time. One is that \u201cthe past is a for\u00adeign coun\u00adtry\u201d \u2014 that we can\u2019t real\u00adly put our\u00adselves in the shoes of four\u00adteenth cen\u00adtury peo\u00adple, because their expe\u00adri\u00adence was fun\u00adda\u00admen\u00adtally alien to our own. The oth\u00ader is that the past is com\u00adpre\u00adhen\u00adsi\u00adble to us psy\u00adcho\u00adlog\u00adi\u00adcally, if our inter\u00adpre\u00adta\u00adtions are based on com\u00admon sense, because human nature and char\u00adac\u00adter remain con\u00adstants. Things in our own expe\u00adri\u00adence will present them\u00adselves as clar\u00adi\u00adfy\u00ading par\u00adal\u00adlels. Can\u00adtor is inclined to this last atti\u00adtude, and so am I. I was not very sur\u00adprised to learn that Can\u00adtor is not the usu\u00adal Oxford don, but the son of a Man\u00adi\u00adtoba ranch\u00ader. An ear\u00adlier book of his, which I great\u00adly enjoyed, exam\u00adined the per\u00adsonal expe\u00adri\u00adences and atti\u00adtudes of sev\u00aderal twen\u00adti\u00adeth cen\u00adtury his\u00adto\u00adri\u00adans who inter\u00adpreted the Mid\u00addle Ages (Invent\u00ading the Mid\u00addle Ages,&nbsp;1992).<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This short and enter\u00adtain\u00ading account of life in four\u00adteenth cen\u00adtury Eng\u00adland and France uses the life of John of Gaunt to illus\u00adtrate its themes. Can\u00adtor is opin\u00adion\u00adated. He likes to make analo\u00adgies with today\u2019s social insti\u00adtu\u00adtions, pop\u00adu\u00adlar lit\u00ader\u00ada\u00adture, and movies.&nbsp;\u2026<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/?p=626\">Read more \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[946,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-b-reading","category-bt-reading-2007"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=626"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8983,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626\/revisions\/8983"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}