The sixth to ninth centuries saw a flowering of written laws among the early Germanic tribes. These laws include tables of fines for personal injury, designed to offer a legal, non-violent alternative to blood feud. Using these personal injury tariffs, The Body Legal in Barbarian Law examines a variety of issues, including the interrelationships between victims, perpetrators, and their families; the causes and results of wounds inflicted in daily life; the methods, successes, and failures of healing techniques; the processes of individual redress or public litigation; and the native and borrowed developments in the various 'barbarian' territories as they separated from the Roman Empire.
By applying the techniques of linguistic anthropology to the pre-history of medicine, anatomical knowledge, and law, Lisi Oliver has produced a remarkable study that sheds new light on early Germanic conceptions of the body in terms of medical value, physiological function, psychological worth, and social significance.

Lisi Oliver is Greater Houston Alumni Chapter Endowed Alumni Professor in the Department of English at Louisiana State University.

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’Intriguing book...The Body Legal in Barbarian Law is like an (unmutilated)body itself: pleasingly structured on the outside and hiding a lot of intricate workings under the skin.’

TOEBI(Teachers of Old English in Britain & Ireland), vol 29:2012