Author: Natalie Zemon Davis
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780199242887
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 318
Book Description
Must a gift be given freely? How can we tell a gift from a bribe? Are gifts always a part of human relations--or do they lose their power and importance once the market takes hold and puts a price on every exchange? These questions are central to our sense of social relations past and present, and they are at the heart of this book by one of our most intersting and renowned historians.
The Gift in Sixteenth-century France
Author: Natalie Zemon Davis
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780199242887
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 318
Book Description
Must a gift be given freely? How can we tell a gift from a bribe? Are gifts always a part of human relations--or do they lose their power and importance once the market takes hold and puts a price on every exchange? These questions are central to our sense of social relations past and present, and they are at the heart of this book by one of our most intersting and renowned historians.
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780199242887
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 318
Book Description
Must a gift be given freely? How can we tell a gift from a bribe? Are gifts always a part of human relations--or do they lose their power and importance once the market takes hold and puts a price on every exchange? These questions are central to our sense of social relations past and present, and they are at the heart of this book by one of our most intersting and renowned historians.
The Gift in Sixteenth-century France
Author: Natalie Zemon Davis
Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press
ISBN: 9780299168803
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 210
Book Description
Must a gift be given freely? How can we tell a gift from a bribe? Are gifts always a part of human relations--or do they lose their power and importance once the market takes hold and puts a price on every exchange? These questions are central to our sense of social relations past and present, and they are at the heart of this book by one of our most interesting and renowned historians. In a wide-ranging look at gift giving in early modern France, Natalie Zemon Davis reveals the ways that gift exchange is crucial to understanding alliance and conflict in family life, economic relations, politics, and religion. Moving from the king's bounty to the beggar's alms, her book explores the modes and meanings of gift giving in every corner of sixteenth-century French society. In doing so, it arrives at a new way of considering gifts--what Davis calls "the gift register"--as a permanent feature of social relations over time. Gift giving, with its own justifications and forms in different periods, can create amity or lead to quarrels and trouble. It mixes the voluntary and the obligatory, with interested bribery at one extreme and inspired gratuitousness at the other. Examining gifts both ethnographically (through archives, letters, and other texts) and culturally (through literary, ethical, and religious sources), Davis shows how coercive features in family life and politics, rather than competition from the market, disrupted the gift system. This intriguing book suggests that examining the significance of gifts can not only help us to understand social relations in the past, but teach us to deal graciously with each other in the present.
Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press
ISBN: 9780299168803
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 210
Book Description
Must a gift be given freely? How can we tell a gift from a bribe? Are gifts always a part of human relations--or do they lose their power and importance once the market takes hold and puts a price on every exchange? These questions are central to our sense of social relations past and present, and they are at the heart of this book by one of our most interesting and renowned historians. In a wide-ranging look at gift giving in early modern France, Natalie Zemon Davis reveals the ways that gift exchange is crucial to understanding alliance and conflict in family life, economic relations, politics, and religion. Moving from the king's bounty to the beggar's alms, her book explores the modes and meanings of gift giving in every corner of sixteenth-century French society. In doing so, it arrives at a new way of considering gifts--what Davis calls "the gift register"--as a permanent feature of social relations over time. Gift giving, with its own justifications and forms in different periods, can create amity or lead to quarrels and trouble. It mixes the voluntary and the obligatory, with interested bribery at one extreme and inspired gratuitousness at the other. Examining gifts both ethnographically (through archives, letters, and other texts) and culturally (through literary, ethical, and religious sources), Davis shows how coercive features in family life and politics, rather than competition from the market, disrupted the gift system. This intriguing book suggests that examining the significance of gifts can not only help us to understand social relations in the past, but teach us to deal graciously with each other in the present.
Word of Honor
Author: Kristen Brooke Neuschel
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 248
Book Description
In this boldly innovative synthesis of political history and interdisciplinary social history, Kristen B. Neuschel revises our understanding of politics in early modern Europe. Drawing on the methods of the linguist and the ethnographer, Neuschel shows that early modern nobles must, like the common people of that period, be approached as having a mentalit very different from our own. In particular, she argues that the world view of these nobles was shaped by their still largely oral culture, and that historians must take this into account if they are to understand, for example, the nobles' volatile loyalties and their close attention to seemingly trivial moments of insult and self-aggrandizement.
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 248
Book Description
In this boldly innovative synthesis of political history and interdisciplinary social history, Kristen B. Neuschel revises our understanding of politics in early modern Europe. Drawing on the methods of the linguist and the ethnographer, Neuschel shows that early modern nobles must, like the common people of that period, be approached as having a mentalit very different from our own. In particular, she argues that the world view of these nobles was shaped by their still largely oral culture, and that historians must take this into account if they are to understand, for example, the nobles' volatile loyalties and their close attention to seemingly trivial moments of insult and self-aggrandizement.
Love Poetry in Sixteenth-century France
Author: Stephen Minta
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 9780719006760
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 192
Book Description
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 9780719006760
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 192
Book Description
Literature and Nation in the Sixteenth Century
Author: Timothy Hampton
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801437748
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 332
Book Description
"The foundational texts of modern French literature were produced during a period of unprecedented struggle over the meaning of community. In the face of religious heresy, political threats from abroad, and new forms of cultural diversity, Renaissance French culture confronted, in new and urgent ways, the question of what it means to be "French." Hampton shows how conflicts between different concepts of community were mediated symbolically through the genesis of new literary forms. Hampton's analysis of works by Rabelais, Montaigne, Du Bellay, and Marguerite de Navarre, as well as writings by lesser-known poets, pamphleteers, and political philosophers, shows that the vulnerability of France and the instability of French identity were pervasive cultural themes during this period.".
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801437748
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 332
Book Description
"The foundational texts of modern French literature were produced during a period of unprecedented struggle over the meaning of community. In the face of religious heresy, political threats from abroad, and new forms of cultural diversity, Renaissance French culture confronted, in new and urgent ways, the question of what it means to be "French." Hampton shows how conflicts between different concepts of community were mediated symbolically through the genesis of new literary forms. Hampton's analysis of works by Rabelais, Montaigne, Du Bellay, and Marguerite de Navarre, as well as writings by lesser-known poets, pamphleteers, and political philosophers, shows that the vulnerability of France and the instability of French identity were pervasive cultural themes during this period.".
Patronage in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century France
Author: Sharon Kettering
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040245382
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 299
Book Description
The dual themes of this volume are the characteristics of patronage relationships and their political uses in early modern France. The first essays provide an overview of the scholarly literature and suggest that the obligatory reciprocity of the patron-client exchange was a defining characteristic. The third and fourth essays compare patronage relationships with kinship and friendship, while the following two focus on the patronage role of noblewomen. Professor Kettering then looks at the role of brokerage in state formation in early modern France, comparing this with other early modern societies. In the final section she explores the role of patronage in the religious wars of the late 16th century and in the civil war of the Fronde a half century later, and the ways in which it was affected by the changing lifestyles of the great nobles during the late 17th century.
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040245382
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 299
Book Description
The dual themes of this volume are the characteristics of patronage relationships and their political uses in early modern France. The first essays provide an overview of the scholarly literature and suggest that the obligatory reciprocity of the patron-client exchange was a defining characteristic. The third and fourth essays compare patronage relationships with kinship and friendship, while the following two focus on the patronage role of noblewomen. Professor Kettering then looks at the role of brokerage in state formation in early modern France, comparing this with other early modern societies. In the final section she explores the role of patronage in the religious wars of the late 16th century and in the civil war of the Fronde a half century later, and the ways in which it was affected by the changing lifestyles of the great nobles during the late 17th century.
Fiction in the Archives
Author: Natalie Zemon Davis
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804717991
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 244
Book Description
To receive a royal pardon in sixteenth-century France for certain kinds of homicide--unpremeditated, unintended, in self-defense, or otherwise excusable--a supplicant had to tell the king a story. These stories took the form of letters of remission, documents narrated to royal notaries by admitted offenders who, in effect, stated their case for pardon to the king. Thousands of such stories are found in French archives, providing precious evidence of the narrative skills and interpretive schemes of peasants and artisans as well as the well-born. This book, by one of the most acclaimed historians of our time, is a pioneering effort to us the tools of literary analysis to interpret archival texts: to show how people from different stations in life shaped the events of a crime into a story, and to compare their stories with those told by Renaissance authors not intended to judge the truth or falsity of the pardon narratives, but rather to refer to the techniques for crafting stories. A number of fascinating crime stories, often possessing Rabelaisian humor, are told in the course of the book, which consists of three long chapters. These chapters explore the French law of homicide, depictions of "hot anger" and self-defense, and the distinctive characteristics of women's stories of bloodshed. The book is illustrated with seven contemporary woodcuts and a facsimile of a letter of remission, with appendixes providing several other original documents. This volume is based on the Harry Camp Memorial Lectures given at Stanford University in 1986.
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804717991
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 244
Book Description
To receive a royal pardon in sixteenth-century France for certain kinds of homicide--unpremeditated, unintended, in self-defense, or otherwise excusable--a supplicant had to tell the king a story. These stories took the form of letters of remission, documents narrated to royal notaries by admitted offenders who, in effect, stated their case for pardon to the king. Thousands of such stories are found in French archives, providing precious evidence of the narrative skills and interpretive schemes of peasants and artisans as well as the well-born. This book, by one of the most acclaimed historians of our time, is a pioneering effort to us the tools of literary analysis to interpret archival texts: to show how people from different stations in life shaped the events of a crime into a story, and to compare their stories with those told by Renaissance authors not intended to judge the truth or falsity of the pardon narratives, but rather to refer to the techniques for crafting stories. A number of fascinating crime stories, often possessing Rabelaisian humor, are told in the course of the book, which consists of three long chapters. These chapters explore the French law of homicide, depictions of "hot anger" and self-defense, and the distinctive characteristics of women's stories of bloodshed. The book is illustrated with seven contemporary woodcuts and a facsimile of a letter of remission, with appendixes providing several other original documents. This volume is based on the Harry Camp Memorial Lectures given at Stanford University in 1986.
Making Money in Sixteenth-Century France
Author: Jotham Parsons
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801454980
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 337
Book Description
Coinage and currency—abstract and socially created units of value and power—were basic to early modern society. By controlling money, the people sought to understand and control their complex, expanding, and interdependent world. In Making Money in Sixteenth-Century France, Jotham Parsons investigates the creation and circulation of currency in France. The royal Cour des Monnaies centralized monetary administration, expanding its role in the emerging modern state during the sixteenth century and assuming new powers as an often controversial repository of theoretical and administrative expertise. The Cour des Monnaies, Parsons shows, played an important role in developing the contemporary understanding of money, as a source of both danger and opportunity at the center of economic and political life. More practically, the Monnaies led generally successful responses to the endemic inflation of the era and the monetary chaos of a period of civil war. Its work investigating and prosecuting counterfeiters shone light into a picaresque world of those who used the abstract and artificial nature of money for their own ends. Parsons’s broad, multidimensional portrait of money in early modern France also encompasses the literature of the age, in which money’s arbitrary and dangerous power was a major theme.
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801454980
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 337
Book Description
Coinage and currency—abstract and socially created units of value and power—were basic to early modern society. By controlling money, the people sought to understand and control their complex, expanding, and interdependent world. In Making Money in Sixteenth-Century France, Jotham Parsons investigates the creation and circulation of currency in France. The royal Cour des Monnaies centralized monetary administration, expanding its role in the emerging modern state during the sixteenth century and assuming new powers as an often controversial repository of theoretical and administrative expertise. The Cour des Monnaies, Parsons shows, played an important role in developing the contemporary understanding of money, as a source of both danger and opportunity at the center of economic and political life. More practically, the Monnaies led generally successful responses to the endemic inflation of the era and the monetary chaos of a period of civil war. Its work investigating and prosecuting counterfeiters shone light into a picaresque world of those who used the abstract and artificial nature of money for their own ends. Parsons’s broad, multidimensional portrait of money in early modern France also encompasses the literature of the age, in which money’s arbitrary and dangerous power was a major theme.
Trickster Travels
Author: Natalie Zemon Davis
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1466829303
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 659
Book Description
An engrossing study of Leo Africanus and his famous book, which introduced Africa to European readers Al-Hasan al-Wazzan--born in Granada to a Muslim family that in 1492 went to Morocco, where he traveled extensively on behalf of the sultan of Fez--is known to historians as Leo Africanus, author of the first geography of Africa to be published in Europe (in 1550). He had been captured by Christian pirates in the Mediterranean and imprisoned by the pope, then released, baptized, and allowed a European life of scholarship as the Christian writer Giovanni Leone. In this fascinating new book, the distinguished historian Natalie Zemon Davis offers a virtuoso study of the fragmentary, partial, and often contradictory traces that al-Hasan al-Wazzan left behind him, and a superb interpretation of his extraordinary life and work. In Trickster Travels, Davis describes all the sectors of her hero's life in rich detail, scrutinizing the evidence of al-Hasan's movement between cultural worlds; the Islamic and Arab traditions, genres, and ideas available to him; and his adventures with Christians and Jews in a European community of learned men and powerful church leaders. In depicting the life of this adventurous border-crosser, Davis suggests the many ways cultural barriers are negotiated and diverging traditions are fused.
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1466829303
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 659
Book Description
An engrossing study of Leo Africanus and his famous book, which introduced Africa to European readers Al-Hasan al-Wazzan--born in Granada to a Muslim family that in 1492 went to Morocco, where he traveled extensively on behalf of the sultan of Fez--is known to historians as Leo Africanus, author of the first geography of Africa to be published in Europe (in 1550). He had been captured by Christian pirates in the Mediterranean and imprisoned by the pope, then released, baptized, and allowed a European life of scholarship as the Christian writer Giovanni Leone. In this fascinating new book, the distinguished historian Natalie Zemon Davis offers a virtuoso study of the fragmentary, partial, and often contradictory traces that al-Hasan al-Wazzan left behind him, and a superb interpretation of his extraordinary life and work. In Trickster Travels, Davis describes all the sectors of her hero's life in rich detail, scrutinizing the evidence of al-Hasan's movement between cultural worlds; the Islamic and Arab traditions, genres, and ideas available to him; and his adventures with Christians and Jews in a European community of learned men and powerful church leaders. In depicting the life of this adventurous border-crosser, Davis suggests the many ways cultural barriers are negotiated and diverging traditions are fused.
Society and Culture in Early Modern France
Author: Natalie Zemon Davis
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804709729
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 396
Book Description
These essays, three of them previously unpublished, explore the competing claims of innovation and tradition among the lower orders in sixteenth-century France. The result is a wide-ranging view of the lives and values of men and women (artisans, tradesmen, the poor) who, because they left little or nothing in writing, have hitherto had little attention from scholars. The first three essays consider the social, vocational, and sexual context of the Protestant Reformation, its consequences for urban women, and the new attitudes toward poverty shared by Catholic humanists and Protestants alike in sixteenth-century Lyon. The next three essays describe the links between festive play and youth groups, domestic dissent, and political criticism in town and country, the festive reversal of sex roles and political order, and the ritualistic and dramatic structure of religious riots. The final two essays discuss the impact of printing on the quasi-literate, and the collecting of common proverbs and medical folklore by learned students of the "people" during the Ancien Régime. The book includes eight pages of illustrations.
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804709729
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 396
Book Description
These essays, three of them previously unpublished, explore the competing claims of innovation and tradition among the lower orders in sixteenth-century France. The result is a wide-ranging view of the lives and values of men and women (artisans, tradesmen, the poor) who, because they left little or nothing in writing, have hitherto had little attention from scholars. The first three essays consider the social, vocational, and sexual context of the Protestant Reformation, its consequences for urban women, and the new attitudes toward poverty shared by Catholic humanists and Protestants alike in sixteenth-century Lyon. The next three essays describe the links between festive play and youth groups, domestic dissent, and political criticism in town and country, the festive reversal of sex roles and political order, and the ritualistic and dramatic structure of religious riots. The final two essays discuss the impact of printing on the quasi-literate, and the collecting of common proverbs and medical folklore by learned students of the "people" during the Ancien Régime. The book includes eight pages of illustrations.