Defects in the Work of Jacques Le Goff

The argument of the following essay is that Le Goff's work shows serious defects. These defects extend from his interpretation of specific events and trends, to the framework in which he attempts to place his subject matter, and ultimately to the approachability and utility of his work. We will, in brief, suggest that his work not only forces peculiar interpretations upon specific events, but is so closely bound up within contemporary French intellectual trends that it is largely unintelligible to the reader who is not intimately attuned to those trends. We will further suggest that these characteristics are not ideosyncracies of Le Goff, but a consequence of his background, education, and experience, and more broadly to the intellectual condition of modern

. . .
ant of medieval universities; the case may well be granted. However, Paris was distinctly exceptional among medieval university cities in being one of the largest of European cities, and moreover a political center. An English-speaker may make immediate contrast to Oxford and Cambridge, provincial towns that were put on the map, so to speak, largely by the universities that were established there. Likewise, in Italy we find universities at Bologna and Padua, not at Florence or Venice. The high-medieval university was certainly not isolated and cloistered as earlier monastery schools had been, but nor was the university life of the Middle Ages simply the Left Bank writ large. It will be noticed that both of the above passages deal in one way or another with France. In Le Goff's treatment of the Avignon, the French monarchy and its relationship to the rest of Europe disappears; in his discussion of university culture, it is the rest of Europe itself that disappears. Le Goff is of course a Frenchman, and a contemporary Frenchman, and it is to his background and experience that we now may turn. Jacques Le Goff was born in Toulon New Years Day of 1924 (International Who's Who, 1994, p. 914). His education and early academic
. . .

Some common words found in the essay are:
Le Goff, Le Goff's, Papacy Avignon, Roland Barthes, World War, Air Force, Medieval Imagination, Occupation Vichy, International Who's, Annales Economies, le goff, le goff's, middle ages, medieval imagination, jacques le goff, jacques le, french intellectual, contemporary french, introduction medieval, intellectuals middle ages, intellectuals middle, introduction medieval imagination, mediterranean mediterranean world, mediterranean world age, papacy avignon,
Approximate Word count = 2406
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page)