Necessary Conjunctions ― The Social Self in Medieval England

Using the term social self to suggest an embedded agency or individuality in which the social group proves as crucial as the particular person, Shaw (history, Wesleyan U.) argues that it is a category that can reveal crucial features of medieval personhood; can encompass the person as an essential social being as well as a thoughtful, feeling agent; and can show how different similar lives can be. He focuses on the small cloth-making cathedral city of Wells, with its two powerful communities of the cathedral church and the Borough Community of citizens and their families, during the 15th century. Annotation c2005 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)