Most recent books you bought.

[The Dark One]

I'm always a sucker for histories of the common folk, regardless of gender, The nobility are, for the most part, boring.

Seems a bit of a generalisation for someone of your edification.

Name 748 boring nobles as compared with 99% of their obscure subjects.

 

[xena]

Just got The Third Gilmore Girl by Kelly Bishop and Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

 

[skip.knox]

Seems a bit of a generalisation for someone of your edification.

Name 748 boring nobles as compared with 99% of their obscure subjects.

Sir This
Sir That
Sir OtherThing
etc.

That's too easy.

Yes, it was an easy generalization. I claim the right of the professional to be lackadaisical about one's own field. <g> I prefer looking at the history of common folk. It's much tougher to get to that, and maybe I like the challenge. Not sure. And sometimes I just like to toss the ball from half court to see if it goes in. Clearly I whiffed with you, but that's okay.

That dispensed with, I do argue that there are good stories to be found among the common folk. I wrote my dissertation about guildsmen in Augsburg--bathhouse keepers and joiners and millers and shoemakers. Their stories were modest and confined, but nevertheless interesting when I read about the poor journeyman shoemaker who was refused master status because he had spent part of his journey in rural villages, even though this was not allowed but there was no work to be had in the city. That sort of thing. Sir OtherThing can have his jousts and his politicking.

And _that_ having been dispensed with, I'll say that I just watched a show about William the Marshall, an old favorite of mine ever since I read Georges Duby's biography. There are some definitely some great stories to be found among the great. Actually, there are good stories pretty much everywhere. I just like the ones about those with ordinary shoes. <Paul Simon reference>

 

[Karlin]

I'm always a sucker for histories of the common folk, regardless of gender, The nobility are, for the most part, boring.

There was a period in which I read the personal memoirs of soldiers.
When my mother died, I found two cartons of letters that my parents wrote each other back in 1948-1949. I found an archive that wanted them. They scanned them and catalogued them. They said that such first hand accounts were really valuable to historians.

 

[The Dark One]

Sir This
Sir That
Sir OtherThing
etc.

That's too easy.

Yes, it was an easy generalization. I claim the right of the professional to be lackadaisical about one's own field. <g> I prefer looking at the history of common folk. It's much tougher to get to that, and maybe I like the challenge. Not sure. And sometimes I just like to toss the ball from half court to see if it goes in. Clearly I whiffed with you, but that's okay.

That dispensed with, I do argue that there are good stories to be found among the common folk. I wrote my dissertation about guildsmen in Augsburg--bathhouse keepers and joiners and millers and shoemakers. Their stories were modest and confined, but nevertheless interesting when I read about the poor journeyman shoemaker who was refused master status because he had spent part of his journey in rural villages, even though this was not allowed but there was no work to be had in the city. That sort of thing. Sir OtherThing can have his jousts and his politicking.

And _that_ having been dispensed with, I'll say that I just watched a show about William the Marshall, an old favorite of mine ever since I read Georges Duby's biography. There are some definitely some great stories to be found among the great. Actually, there are good stories pretty much everywhere. I just like the ones about those with ordinary shoes. <Paul Simon reference>

The fact that they are hard to find is probably the number one hindrance to exploring commoner stories.

I presume you've read The Cheese and The Worms by Carlo Ginsberg?

 

[skip.knox]

Oh yes. Microhistory! Magdalena and Balthazar is another (a good example for Karlin).

It isn't really all that difficult to find documents and other evidence for common folk, at least not from oh say the 14thc onward. Gets really rich by the 16thc. Historians have been working those fields for a very long time.

 

[Prince of Spires]

Are they documents about actual common folk, or are they just about rich people without titles? After all, a wealthy merchant in the 16th century would live very differently from one of the sailors on his ships, and his life would probably have more in common with a nobleman than with that sailor I'd think.

 

[The Dark One]

Cheese/Worms is a fascinating account regarding the unorthodox cosmology of common people in the C16.

Sourced from the records of the Italian Inquisition.

 

[skip.knox]

>Are they documents about actual common folk, or are they just about rich people without titles?

I was thinking specifically of commoners. My whole dissertation was about common folk--millers, shoemakers, joiners, and bathhouse keepers. And there are scads of books and articles on that sort, going back well over a century. There are even works on the poor, on peasants, and marginalized people of various types.

The sources are tricky, often require specialized skills, but they exist. That most folk think history is only about the rich and powerful should be put down not to the profession but to corporate publishers, and their values and priorities.

 

[skip.knox]

Cheese/Worms is a fascinating account regarding the unorthodox cosmology of common people in the C16.

Sourced from the records of the Italian Inquisition.

Also brilliant is Ladurie's work on the peasants of Montaillou. It provides a rare look into how heresy {Cathar} worked in the countryside. Those inquisitors were fine records keepers.

 

[The Dark One]

Also brilliant is Ladurie's work on the peasants of Montaillou. It provides a rare look into how heresy {Cathar} worked in the countryside. Those inquisitors were fine records keepers.

My most recent sci-fi novel features the Cathars.