Description
Book SynopsisGrubb's comprehensive analysis of his subjects' compelling, if inconspicuous, lives investigates every significant aspect of private experience during the Renaissance: marriage, birth, death, household relations, work, land, social status, and spirituality. Winner of the Society for Italian Historical Studies's Howard R. Marraro PrizeOriginally published in 1996. Historical writing on the Renaissance has usually focused on the social extremes that co-existed in the great metropolitan centerson either elites or the underclass. As a result, the world of the middling families and provincial societies remains largely unexplored. Daily experiences in the lesser cities are, however, no less rich and revealing than those of Florence, Venice, and Milan. In addition, writes historian James Grubb, these experiences offer new perspectives from which to reassess familiar assumptions about domestic life in the fifteenth century. Based on memoirs and other records left by thirteen merchant families
Trade ReviewGrubb knows everything about the people he studies . . . [and] gives us an unusual view of Renaissance Italian life in that he concentrates on the busy mercantile class and not on the princes and prostitutes that are more usually the subject of scholars . . . [He] supplies a number of useful pieces for the great mosaic of Italian Renaissance history. Also, he writes well.
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Bibliotheque d'Humanisme et RenaissanceA good example of social and economic history that is well researched and written. It will be best used by upper-level and graduate students of Renaissance Italy as an example of what solid scholarship can produce and to illustrate and expand the works of the new social historians.
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HistoryTable of ContentsAcknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1. Marriage
Chapter 2. Children
Chapter 3. Death
Chapter 4. Household and Family
Chapter 5. Work
Chapter 6. Land
Chapter 7. Patriciate
Chapter 8. Spirituality and Religion
Epilogue
Appendix
Notes
Bibliography
Index
