Jennifer Paxton

Department

  • History
  • School

  • School of Arts and Sciences
  • Expertise

  • Medieval England
  • Medieval Ireland
  • Medieval monasticism
  • Jennifer Paxton is working on a book manuscript entitled Chronicle and Community in Twelfth-Century England, which looks at the ways in which medieval English monastic communities used historical texts to assert various claims to power and authority in a rapidly changing political, economic, and spiritual landscape. She is focusing on chronicles written at eastern English monasteries in the aftermath of the great upheavals of the Norman Conquest and the civil war of King Stephen’s reign, in which monastic compilers deployed every resource at their command to distinguish themselves from rival houses and defend themselves against the sometimes aggressive claims of lay lords and even bishops. Dr. Paxton is also working on a further project that examines changing views of abbatial leadership across the Anglo-Norman world in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.

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    Selected Publications

    Jennifer Paxton, “Fighting the Last War: Remembering the Norman Conquest during the Anarchy,” in John D. Hosler and Steven Isaac, ed., Military Cultures and Martial Enterprises in the Middle Ages: Essays in Honour of Richard P. Abels (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2020), 117-35

    Jennifer Paxton, “Lords and Monks: Creating an Ideal of Noble Power in Monastic Chronicles”, in Robert F. Berkhofer III, Alan Cooper, and Adam J. Costo, ed., The Experience of Power in Medieval Europe, 950-1350 (Ashgate, 2005), 227-36

    Jennifer Paxton, “Textual Communities in the English Fenlands: A Lay Audience for Monastic Chronicles?” Anglo-Norman Studies 26 (2004 for 2003), 123-37

    Jennifer Paxton, “Forging Communities: Memory and Identity in Post-Conquest England,” Haskins Society Journal 10 (2002 for 2001), 95-109

    Jennifer Paxton, “Monks and Bishops: The Purpose of the Liber Eliensis,” Haskins Society Journal 11 (2003 for 1998), 17-30

    Jennifer Paxton, “The Book of Ely,” in T. F. Head, ed., Medieval Hagiography: A Sourcebook (Garland, 2000), 459-94.

    Lecture Series: The Great Courses

    England: From the Fall of Rome to the Norman Conquest

     

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    Great Courses: Fall of Rome to Norman Conquest

    The Celtic World

     

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    The Story of Medieval England: From King Arthur to the Tudor Conquest

     

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    1066: The Year that Changed Everything

     

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