The course intends to give an overview of the approach of microhistory, one of the most important currents of writing history in the last decades. First the Italian origins are investigated and the classical works, then the more recent examples that explore the last 600 years of European history from the Middle Ages and the Italian Renaissance through the Enlightenment to modernity. Each week, a different book will be discussed in the seminar. The reading list will be finalized together with the students, taking into consideration their interests. The learning outcomes of the course are a critical understanding of the approach discussed, an increased alertness to agency in history, and an ensuing attention to the responsibility of historical actors.
https://szijarto.web.elte.hu/AngolPhD2026oszZoom.htm
Course content
At the end of the course, the learner will be able to understand the approach of microhistory, to acquire an increased alertness to agency in history, and an ensuing attention to the responsibility of historical actors.
None.
2-4.Carlo Ginzburg: The Cheese and the Worms. The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller. London and Henley: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980;
Giovanni Levi: Inheriting Power: The Story of an Exorcist. University of Chicago Press: Chicago, 1988;
Carlo Ginzburg: The Enigma of Piero. Verso: London – New York, 2000.
5-6. Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie: Montaillou: The Promised Land of Error. Scolar Press: London, 1978. Part I, Chapters 1-7;
Paul Edward Dutton: Micro Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan: Cham, 2023. Chapter 2: A Name: Heloise, Philosophess and Prostitute;
Paul Edward Dutton: Charlamagne’s mustache and other cultural clusters of a dark age. Palgrave Macmillan: New York, 2004. pp. 43-92: Chapters 2-3;
Steven Bednarski: A Poisoned Past: The Life and Times of Margarida de Portu, a Fourteenth-Century Accused Poisoner. University of Toronto Press, 2014;
Natalie Zemon Davis: The Return of Martin Guerre. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, MA, 1983;
Natalie Zemon Davis: Trickster Travels. A Sixteenth-Century Muslim Between Worlds. Hill and Wang: New York, 2006;
R. Po-chia Hsia: 1475. Stories of a Ritual Murder Trial, New Haven CT and London: Yale University Press, 1992.
7-8. Guido Ruggiero: Love and Sex in the Time of Plague. A Decameron Renaissance. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, MA – London, 2021. 1-60: Introduction and Chapter 1: Listening to the Decameron: An Introduction; Laughter. Imagining Love, Lust and Virtù in the Rinascimento;
Thomas V. Cohen: Love and Death in Renaissance Italy. University of Chicago Press: Chicago–London, 2004. Chapter 6: Three in a Bed. The Seduction of Innocentia;
Guido Ruggiero: Machiavelli in Love. Sex, Self, and Society in the Italian Renaissance. The Johns Hopkins University Press: Baltimore, 2007. Chapter 5: Machiavelli in Love: The Self-Presentation of an Aging Lover;
Gene Brucker: Giovanni and Lusanna. Love and Marriage in Renaissance Florence. University of California Press: Berkeley – Los Angeles, 1986;
etc. See the home-page.
Participants of the course will take part in Zoom seminars. Attendance of each class is mandatory. Up to two unexcused absences will be tolerated before the final grade is affected. For missed classes, compulsory readings should be made up by 18 May 2025 at the latest in the form of an oral examination. However, there are no prerequisites and no essay is to be submitted, in consideration of the large amount of the material to be read from one class to the other.
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