From the late Middle Ages to "The Marriage of Figaro" to Mel Gibson's "Braveheart," the ultimate symbol of feudal barbarism has been the "droit de cuissage," or right of a feudal lord to sleep with the bride of a vassal on her wedding night. The "droit de cuissage" even resurfaced in the debate over the French Penal Code of 1992 as a synonym for sexual harassment. But, as Alain Boureau elegantly demonstrates in this book, the "droit de cuissage" is a myth. Under contextual examination, nearly all the supposed evidence for this custom melts away yet belief in it has survived for seven...
From the late Middle Ages to "The Marriage of Figaro" to Mel Gibson's "Braveheart," the ultimate symbol of feudal barbarism has been the "droit de cui...
"Geography of the Gaze" offers a new history and theory of how the way we look at things influences what we see. Focusing on Western Europe from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, Renzo Dubbini shows how developments in science, art, mapping, and visual epistemology affected the ways natural and artificial landscapes were perceived and portrayed. He begins with the idea of the "view," explaining its role in the invention of landscape painting and in the definition of landscape as a cultural space. Among other topics, Dubbini explores how the descriptive and pictorial techniques used...
"Geography of the Gaze" offers a new history and theory of how the way we look at things influences what we see. Focusing on Western Europe from the s...
In this book, third in a series which includes Jacques Le Goff's "Medieval Characters" and Eugenio Garin's "Renaissance Portraits," leading scholars search for the character of the ancient Romans through portraits of Rome's most typical personages. Essays on the politician, the soldier, the priest, the farmer, the slave, the merchant, and others together create a fresco of Roman society as it spanned 1300 years. Synthesizing a wealth of current research, "The Romans" surveys the most complex society ever to exist prior to the Industrial Age. Searching out the identity of the ancient...
In this book, third in a series which includes Jacques Le Goff's "Medieval Characters" and Eugenio Garin's "Renaissance Portraits," leading scholars s...
Christiane Klapisch-Zuber Lydia G. Cochrane David V. Herlihy
Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, a brilliant historian of the Annales school, skillfully uncovers the lives of ordinary Italians of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Tuscans in particular, young and old, rich, middle-class, and poor. From the extraordinarily detailed records kept by Florentine tax collectors and the equally precise ricordanze (household accounts with notations of events great and small), Klapisch-Zuber draws a living picture of the Tuscan household. We learn, for example, how children were named, how wet nurses were engaged, how marriages were negotiated and...
Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, a brilliant historian of the Annales school, skillfully uncovers the lives of ordinary Italians of the fourteenth and fifte...
Cultural history on a grand scale, this immensely readable book-the summation of decades of study by one of the world's great scholars of the book-is the story of writing from its very beginnings to its recent transformations through technology. Traversing four millennia, Martin offers a chronicle of writing as a cultural system, a means of communication, and a history of technologies. He shows how the written word originated, how it spread, and how it figured in the evolution of civilization. Using as his center the role of printing in making the written way of thinking dominant, Martin...
Cultural history on a grand scale, this immensely readable book-the summation of decades of study by one of the world's great scholars of the book-is ...
"A rich historical pastiche of 17th- and 18th-century philosophy, science, and religion." G. Y. Craig, "New Scientist " "This book, by a distinguished Italian historian of philosophy, is a worthy successor to the author's important works on Francis Bacon and on technology and the arts. First published in Italian (in 1979), it now makes available to English readers some subtly wrought arguments about the ways in which geology and anthropology challenged biblical chronology and forced changes in the philosophy of history in the early modern era. . . . Rossi] shows that the search for new...
"A rich historical pastiche of 17th- and 18th-century philosophy, science, and religion." G. Y. Craig, "New Scientist " "This book, by a distingui...
The Baroque, which stretched from the end of the sixteenth to the second half of the seventeenth century, is one of the most enigmatic eras in history. In this book, thirteen distinguished scholars develop a portrait of institutions, ideologies, intellectual themes, and social structures as they are reflected in Baroque personae, or characteristic social roles. Studying the statesman, soldier, financier, secretary, rebel, preacher, missionary, nun, witch, scientist, artist, and bourgeois, the essays depart dramatically from traditional accounts of this era. The statesman, for example, is...
The Baroque, which stretched from the end of the sixteenth to the second half of the seventeenth century, is one of the most enigmatic eras in history...
"Enlightenment Portraits" permits us to see direct actors in history, people who took an active part in the collective adventures that put the human being at the center of Western civilizations vision of the world: nobles, priests, functionaries, men of letters, artists, and explorers, also soldiers and women. The Enlightenment's leading figures cast their light in an irregular and unequal way: areas and environments in which new ideas penetrated and took effect alternated with shadowy patches. The fundamental structures of society may have remained stable, but new ways of producing, of...
"Enlightenment Portraits" permits us to see direct actors in history, people who took an active part in the collective adventures that put the human b...
In the midst of the religious ferment, foreign invasions, and internal political strife that beset Italy before the full effects of the Counter-Reformation, the powerful and humble alike turned to popular prophecy for guidance and solace. Ottavia Niccoli examines here the forms of these prophecies--including interpretations of natural disasters, abnormal births, floods, and planetary conjunctions--and gives examples of how they were transmitted from the lower classes to the elite through street singers, apocalyptic preachers, astrologers, and printers. By tracing the ongoing revision of...
In the midst of the religious ferment, foreign invasions, and internal political strife that beset Italy before the full effects of the Counter-Ref...
The importance of history has been powerfully reaffirmed in recent years by the appearance of major new authors, pathbreaking works, and fresh interpretations of historical events, trends, and methods. Responding to these developments, Roger Chartier engages several of the most influential writers of cultural history whose works have spread far beyond academic audiences to become part of contemporary cultural argument. Challenging the assertion that history is no more than a -fiction-making operation- Chartier examines the relationships between history and fiction and proposes new...
The importance of history has been powerfully reaffirmed in recent years by the appearance of major new authors, pathbreaking works, and fresh inte...
