Part Two: Since the beginning, man has told many a story. Some of these stories were based on experience, while others were based on whimsical imagination creations. Of all the time periods, none are as dramatic, engaging, and rich in culture and content as the medieval period! Medieval stories tend to have a few predictable elements: Religion, politics, super cool castles, and courtly romance. For most, the highly noticeable subject in medieval literature is religion. Every book, article, or poem we have read in our class this semester has contain religion in some aspect. So in this essay I am going to explore the question, “How did medieval Christian writers seek to organize their world? Was their imagined order replicated in reality?” In …show more content…
She then goes on to talk about the different groups that were diverse and expressed different identities, which Bynum interprets as "a reflection of changing ideas of the Christian life" . Throughout her work she emphasizes the importance of writing about the topics within medieval literature that is sometimes acknowledged less than other topics. She states that, “My purpose is therefore to place the often discussed discovery of the individual in the context of another equally new and important twelfth-century interest to which scholars have paid less attention: a quiet self-conscious interest in the process of belonging to groups and filling roles If the religious writing, the religious practice, and the religious orders of the twelfth century are characterized by a new concern for the inner man, it is because of a new concern for the group, for types and examples, for the other man" . Bynum goes on to say that “If the twelfth century authors were more aware of their motives for acting, of the process or making a choice, of interior change, it was not only because there were in fact a wider variety of social roles and a new diversity of religious groups that made choice necessary; it was also because people now had ways of talking about groups as groups, roles as roles, and about group formation. Therefore they could be conscious of choosing… Therefore, for twelfth-century writers, change of self-had to take place in context provided by other