Fertile Spaces: The Productivity of Urban Space in Northern Europe

Abstract

Spatial theory—the study of the relationship between material and discursive spatial practices—has great potential for recasting our understanding of urban life in Europe during the late medieval and early modern period, a formative moment in the history of Western urbanity. Urban space—and spaces— acquired powerful, effective valences in this age, producing new social possibilities and new historical actors while simulataneously eliminating others. Examining spatial practices through the lens of legal space, ritual space, and textual space not only exposes the assumptions about early modern urbanity that underlay existing historiography on city space in the period but also points toward the spatial histories that have not yet been written on markets, gender, and the public.

Spaces in Theory, Spaces in History and Spatial Historiographies

“…And third, it asks us to clarify what spatial registers do to our accounts when we examine past events. Like Arnade et al (2002) we might ask what the apparently synchronic notion of ‗space' does to ‗time' that is, to assumptions that causality resides in chronology and that narrative is the primary medium of history? Historians have been wary of using spatial terms since, as Foucault noted, ‗the use of spatial terms seems to have the air of anti-history.…”

“…Historians have been wary of using spatial terms since, as Foucault noted, ‗the use of spatial terms seems to have the air of anti-history. If one started to talk in terms of space that meant that one was hostile to time' (Arnade, Howell, and Simons 2002). Spatial registers may disrupt history's investment in time and linearity, and may appeal as offering ‗a respite from the meta-narratives that have long threatened to reduce [places] to footnotes, outcomes of functionalist processes generated outside the historians' view, in the shadowy world where such abstractions as -the market,‖ -political self-determination,‖ or -the state‖ reside' (Arnade, Howell, and Simons 2002).…”

“…If one started to talk in terms of space that meant that one was hostile to time' (Arnade, Howell, and Simons 2002). Spatial registers may disrupt history's investment in time and linearity, and may appeal as offering ‗a respite from the meta-narratives that have long threatened to reduce [places] to footnotes, outcomes of functionalist processes generated outside the historians' view, in the shadowy world where such abstractions as -the market,‖ -political self-determination,‖ or -the state‖ reside' (Arnade, Howell, and Simons 2002). This vision of space as material grounding -bringing abstract processes to earth -sees places as where multiple processes come together in complex real world constellations.…”

The interpretation of urban buildings: power, memory and appropriation in Norwich merchants' houses,c. 1400–1660

“…However, this was also a period of sustained conflict between different factions within the elite which erupted into violence over disputed elections in 1437 and 1443 and led to the revocation of the city's liberties from 1443 to 1447 (McRee 1992: 84-7;Tanner 1984: 143-55). Archaeologists and historians have long been aware of the ways in which public buildings and the urban landscape were manipulated in the expression and negotiation of political authority in the late medieval city (Arnade et al 2002;Attreed 1994;Giles 2000). In Norwich this was marked in civic building projectsthe impressive Guildhall constructed 1407-12 and the rebuilding of St Peter Mancroft parish church in the marketplace in the 1440s and 1450s.…”

Cultural History of Early Modern Streets—An Introduction

“…Moreover, while whole street systems have been the central focus, concrete streets have tended to hover in the background. 3 Aiming for integration, in this collection of articles, we have attended to the nature of the street as an urban material entity, as a starting point for studying people in the streets (and near them), highlighting the integral connectivity of the material and the immaterial. 4 All streets in this issue are European.…”