The Historical Anthropology of Early Modern Italy
Essays on Perception and Communication

This volume presents an original view of the culture of early modern Italy.

Peter Burke (Author)

9780521023672, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 17 November 2005

292 pages
23 x 15.3 x 2 cm, 0.45 kg

'Burke's style is deft and sure at the same time as it is erudite. He brings together deep knowledge, primary documentation, systematic analysis, dazzling insight. In the anthropological style, he often starts with a text. Like a historian, he puts that text into a context and examines how the structure, process or activity under scrutiny changes over time. The volume is well written, tells stories of human as well as scholarly interest, and analyses texts and events in lively and suggestive ways, often with a surprise ending or twist to the explanation.' Louise Tilly, New School for Social Research

Based on archival material from the cities of Genoa, Milan, Venice, Florence, Rome, and Naples, as well as on published sources, such as travel journals, and artistic representations, this volume presents an original view of the culture of early modern Italy. The book addresses particular themes - specifically those of perception and communication - as well as serving to exemplify modes of analysis in the currently developing field of historical anthropology. In the first part of the book, Peter Burke examines the stereotyped ways in which contemporaries perceived social groups such as saints, beggars, and working women, and shows how these stereotypes were used, consciously and unconsciously, both by the authorities and by ordinary people.

List of illustrations
Preface
References
Part I. Introduction: 1. The historical anthropology of early modern Italy
2. The sources: outsiders and insiders
Part II. Modes of Perception: 3. Classifying the people: the census as collective representation
4. The bishop's questions and the people's religion
5. How to be a Counter-Reformation saint
6. Perceiving a counter-culture
Part III. Modes of Communication: 7. Languages and anti-languages in early modern Italy
8. Insult and blasphemy in early modern Italy
9. The uses of literacy in early modern Italy
10. Conspicuous consumption in seventeenth-century Italy
11. The presentation of self in the Renaissance portrait
12. Sacred rulers, royal priests: rituals of the early modern popes
13. The carnival of Venice
14. The virgin of the Carmine and the revolt of Masaniello
15. Rituals of healing in early modern Italy
Part IV. Conclusion: 16. The repudiation of ritual in early modern Europe
Notes
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Early modern history: c 1450/1500 to c 1700 [HBLH], European history [HBJD]