Heroes and Marvels of the Middle Ages

"Le Goff explores wonders and oddities that caught the imagination in the past. If you are a parent of an eight-year-old girl you are likely to meet unicorns on a daily basis. Multicolored unicorns with rainbow-hued manes and tails on T-shirts and pyjamas and drawings stuck on the fridge. Your daughter will write stories about unicorns and even have one as pet in some virtual technological world she inhabits with her friends. And when you ask what’s so great about unicorns you'll be told, 'Well, they're magic!' But you still won't get it. To begin to understand, you need to go straight to the unicorn chapter of this first English translation of Heroes and Marvels of the Middle Ages by the French medievalist le Goff. The existence of the unicorn has been attested since classical times, including in Pliny's De Rerum Natura, but the key text, Goff tells us, is a Gnostic treatise written in Greek in Alexandria between the second and fourth centuries AD, and soon translated into Latin, called the Physiologus."

"At the time of his death in 2014, Le Goff (formerly, School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, Paris) was a leading scholar of medieval Europe. . . . In these 19 short essays—originally published in French in 2005—he offers case studies of "the medieval imaginary" to argue that many creations of medieval culture not only had long lives but are still present today. . . . The erudition is smoothly presented with an implicit argument for the basic similarity between medieval culture and its modern heirs. . . . Recommended."

"This welcome translation makes Le Goff’s Heros et merveilles du Moyen Age, originally published in 2005, available to an Anglophone audience. The work of this French historian emphasized the multilayered nature of history and the importance of social and economic trends alongside political or diplomatic themes. Le Goff’s contributions to the reassessment of medieval civilization continued throughout his life, and his influence has been far-reaching."