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Daily life in medieval Japan (1185-1606 CE) was, for most people, the age-old struggle to put food on the table, build a family, stay healthy, and try to enjoy the finer things in life whenever possible. The upper classes...

Margery Kempe (l. c. 1373 - c. 1438 CE) was a medieval mystic and author of the first autobiography in English, The Book of Margery Kempe, which relates her spiritual journey from wife and mother in Bishop's Lynn, England to a chaste...

The question "Why do bad things happen to good people?" has been asked for millennia, probably since before writing was invented, but at least since circa 1700 BCE when the Sumerian (and later...

Eleanor of Aquitaine (l. c. 1122-1204 CE) was one of the most impressive and powerful figures of the High Middle Ages (1000-1300 CE) – male or female – whose influence shaped the politics, art, medieval literature, and perception...

Renaissance Humanism was an intellectual movement typified by a revived interest in the classical world and studies which focussed not on religion but on what it is to be human. Its origins went back to 14th-century Italy...

Gilgamesh and Huwawa is a Sumerian poem relating the expedition of Gilgamesh and Enkidu to the Cedar Forest and the slaying of the monster-demon Huwawa. The work predates and informs The Epic of Gilgamesh in which the death...

Shulgi and Ninlil's Barge is a Sumerian poem dated to the reign of Shulgi of Ur (2094 - circa 2046 BCE) celebrating the caulking of the barge of the goddess Ninlil, consort of the sky god Enlil...

Women in ancient Persia were not only highly respected but, in many cases, considered the equals of males. Women could own land, conduct business, received equal pay, could travel freely on their own, and in the case of...

Illuminated manuscripts were hand-made books, usually on Christian scripture or practice, produced in Western Europe between c. 500-c. 1600. They are so called because of the use of gold and silver which illuminates the...

The Canterbury Tales (written c. 1388-1400 CE) is a medieval literary work by the poet Geoffrey Chaucer (l. c. 1343-1400 CE) comprised of 24 tales related to a number of literary genres and touching on subjects ranging from...