Ms. Hoofnagle has created an interesting analysis of some aspects of the Eleventh and Twelfth century minds. Working carefully from slight materials she has woven laws, history, architecture and literature into a picture of the justifications for the Norman conquest. Her work has opened our way for further exploration, using this technique. She advances the theory that the Normans who crossed the channel in 1066 did not view themselves as Norsemen continuing the Danish attempts to conquer England, but as disciples of the Carolingian mind set, once more establishing order in this barbarian successor state to the Roman province of Britannia.
She then explores how the mindset went on to establish the idea of a "safe place for the Norman Nobility, the Royal Forest, and how this real entity gave birth, in part to the literary concept of the safe place to discuss the exercise of power in England, and the emigration of this to the literary trope of flight to the forest to examine and sort out internal conflicts with the accepted order.
This was more than I expected, and I was pleased to engage with her arguments and depth of research.
More people should read this book. ( )