Three Studies in Medieval Religious and Social Thought: The Interpretation of Mary and Martha, The Ideal of the Imitation of Christ, The Orders of Society. By Giles Constable. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1995. xx + 423 pp. $59.95.

1997 ◽  
Vol 66 (3) ◽  
pp. 567-568
Author(s):  
Stephan Borgehammar
Keyword(s):  
Social Thought ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
Imitation Of Christ ◽  
The Ideal

THE FOREST FOR THE TREES: SOCIETY AND THE HOUSEHOLD IN EARLY MODERN EUROPE

1998 ◽  
Vol 41 (4) ◽  
pp. 1161-1172 ◽  
Author(s):  
JOEL F. HARRINGTON
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
University Of Pennsylvania ◽  
Italian Renaissance ◽  
German History ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
Johns Hopkins University ◽  
Big Picture ◽  
To Come ◽  
The Ideal

Gender relations in German history: power, agency, and experience from the sixteenth to the twentieth century. Edited by Lynn Abrams and Elizabeth Harvey. London: UCL, 1996. Pp. x+262. ISBN 1-85728-485-2. £12.95.Adultery and divorce in Calvin's Geneva. By Robert M. Kingdon. Cambridge, Mass., and London: Harvard UP, 1995. Pp. ix+214. ISBN 0-674-00520-1 (hb). £18.50.Housecraft and statecraft: domestic service in Renaissance Venice, 1400–1600. By Dennis Romano. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996. Pp. xxvi+333. ISBN 0-8018-5288-9. £37.00.The European nobility, 1400–1800. By Jonathan Dewald. New approaches to European history, ix. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Pp. xvii+209. ISBN 0-521-42528-x (pb). £12.95.Garden and grove: the Italian Renaissance garden in the English imagination, 1600–1750. By John Dixon Hunt. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1996. Pp. xix+268. ISBN 0-8122-1604-0 (pb). £23.50.Like an ancient woodsman or a guide through the Amazonian jungle, the ideal historian possesses at least two kinds of expertise: enough familiarity with the general terrain to plan successful expeditions and enough experience in the field to make inevitable adjustments to ‘the big picture’ when underway. Of course in the real world (of both geography and history) the tasks of exploration and cartography are often bifurcated, without necessarily disastrous results. The historian who is equally skilled at both close-up description and large-scale theorizing is consequently celebrated as a rare and valued anomaly. Meanwhile, for most of us stumbling scouts, the world beyond our familiar trails remains largely one of learned lore, with connections to our own limited forays often vague at best. Unless, of course, we are fortunate enough to come across something which provides an almost magical link between the narrow and the wide, the micro and the macro.

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