Dear
Colleagues:
Tom Cohen has given us a lovely parting gift in the form of a new book entitled Roman Tales: A Reader’s Guide to the Art of Microhistory (Routledge). The description and contents are below. Please join me in congratulating our colleague on this wonderful accomplishment corresponding with the start of his retirement.
Thabit
Description
Roman T
ales: A Reader’s Guide to the Art of Microhistory explores both the social and cultural life of Renaissance Rome and the mind-set and methods of microhistory.
This book draws the reader deep into eight stories: a Christian-Jewish picnic plus an ill-aimed stone fight, an embassy-driven attack on Rome’s police, a magic prophetic mirror, an immured mad hermit, a stolen dwarf, and the bizarre misadventures of a stolen roll of velvet, a truly odd elopement, and a thieving child who treats his cronies to dinner at the inn. It meditates on the resources and lacunae that shape the telling of these stories and, through them, it models an historical method that contrives to turn the limits of our knowledge into an advantage by writing honestly and movingly, to bring a dead past back to life, exemplifying and stretching the genre of microhistory. It also discusses strategies for teaching through intensive use of old documents, with a particular focus on criminal tribunal papers.
Engagingly written, Roman Tales outlines the main principles of microhistorical research and draws the reader outwards towards a wider exploration and discovery of sixteenth-century Rome. It is ideal for researchers of microhistory, and of medieval and early modern Italy.
Table of Contents
Ackowledgements
Abbreviations
1 First Thoughts
2 If on a Summer’s Eve a Traveller, or Two
3 White Angel
4 The Spanish Ambassador’s Brawl
5 Hermit on Trial
6 The Case of the Purloined Dwarf
7 Black Velvet’s Odd Adventure
8 Nicolina Runs Away
9 A Boy Steals Gold
Afterword