Memory, family, and self : Tuscan family books and other European egodocuments (14th-18th century) / by Giovanni Ciappelli ; translated by Susan Amanda George
Introduction: Memory, Family, Identity in Early Modern Italy and Europe -- Family Books in Florence : Evolution and Involution of a Genre -- Books and Readings in Florence in the 15th Century : "Ricordanze" and the Reconstruction of Private Libraries -- Memory of Historical Events in Florentine "Ricordanze" (14th-15th Century) -- Domestic Devotion in Florentine "Ricordanze" (13th- 16th Century) -- The Family Books of the Castellani -- The Medici "Ricordi" -- Collective Memory and Cultural Memory : The Family between Antiquity and the Early Modern Period -- Family Memory in the Early Modern Age : The Case of Tuscany -- The Evolution of Family Memory Models : Tuscan Family Books (16th-18th Century) -- Family Memory in Florence in the Time of Giuseppe Pelli Bencivenni -- Collective and Individual Identity in Florence (16th-18th Century) : The Family Book of Gianni -- Family Memory and Individual Memory : Florentine Private Diaries and Family Books of the Early Modern Period -- The Edition of Tuscan Sources for Family History in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period -- Is there a Main Road in the Study of Autobiography? -- Memory and Egodocuments in Early Modern Europe
Summary
The book deals with both a reconstruction of Tuscan family books' evolution and persistency, and several aspects of social history: reading and private libraries, domestic devotion, the memory of historical events. Starting with the Renaissance, the investigation broadens to the 17th-18th centuries and other forms of memory: private diaries and autobiographies. A final section is dedicated to the issue of memory in the egodocuments of early modern Europe