Journal of the History of Ideas (Volume 68, Number 2, April 2007)

189 Pages·2007·16.6 MB·English

by  University of Pennsylvania Press

JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF IDEAS
H
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APRIL 2007 VOLUME 68, NUMBER 2
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OFT HEH ISTOROYF I DEAS
JOURNAL
VOLUME 68, NUMBER 2
APRIL 2007
Journal of the History of Ideas
(ISSN 0022-5037)
is published quarterlyb y the
University of PennsylvaniaP ress
JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF IDEAS
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Universityo f Pennsylvania City Universityo f New York
Anthony Grafton Ann E. Moyer
PrincetonU niversity Universityo f Pennsylvania
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RutgersU niversity
MANAGINGE DITOR
Robin Ladrach
Universityo f Pennsylvania
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Old Dominion University
BOARD OF EDITORS
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Joshua A. Fogel, York University Elias Jose Palti, U. Nacional de Quilmes
Charles C. Gillispie,P rincetonU niversity Peter Paret,I nstitutef or AdvancedS tudy
Daniel Gordon, Universityo f Massachusetts EugeneF . Rice, ColumbiaU niversity
Peter Eli Gordon, HarvardU niversity David Harris Sacks, Reed College
Emily Grosholz, Penn State University J. B. Schneewind,J ohns Hopkins University
Knud Haakonssen,U niversityo f Sussex JerroldS eigel, New York University
David Hollinger,U niversityo f California Nancy G. Siraisi,H unter College
MaryanneC . Horowitz, OccidentalC ollege Quentin Skinner,C ambridgeU niversity
BruceK uklick,U niversityo f Pennsylvania Perez Zagorin, Universityo f Rochester
CONSULTING EDITORS
FrederickB eiser ElizabethL unbeck
GregoryC laeys Rudolf Makkreel
Stefan Collini David Fate Norton
BrianP . Copenhaver Steven Ozment
James Engell Gordon Schochet
Maurice M. Goldsmith Nancy S. Struever
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BOARD OF DIRECTORS
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J. B. Schneewind
JOURNALO F THE HISTORYO F IDEAS
Volume 68, Number 2 (April 2007)
CONTENTS
The Rhetoric of Historical Writing:D ocumentary Sources in Histories of
Worms, c. 1300
DAVID S. BACHRACH
187
Stefano Porcari's Conspiracya gainst Pope Nicholas V in 1453
and Republican Culturei n Papal Rome
ANTHONY F. D'ELIA
207
Mapping the Aesthetic Mind:J ohn Dennis and Nicolas Boileau
ANN T. DELEHANTY
233
Cosmopolitan Egalitarianismi n the Enlightenment:
Anquetil Duperron on India and America
SIEP STUURMAN
255
The Spectero f Hegel in Coleridge'sB iographiaL iteraria
AYON ROY
279
CarrieC hapman Catt and the Evolutionary Politics of Sex and Race,
1885-1940
KEVIN S. AMIDON
305
Contents
Elie Halevy's First Lectureso n the History of EuropeanS ocialism
LUDOVIC FROBERT
329
Books Received
355
iv
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The Rhetoric of Historical Writing: Documentary
Sources in Histories of Worms, c. 1300
DavidS .B achrach
INTRODUCTION
It has long been recognizedb y modern scholars, and indeed was recognized
by medieval writers as well, that discussing the past in a manner that in-
spires a reader'sc onfidencei n the accuracy of the historian'sa ccount is not
an easy task. Isidore of Seville's dictum in the Etymologiae, perhaps better
known during the Middle Ages than today, that history is the presentation
of events that actually happened in the past, placed a heavy and continuing
burden on medieval writers.' A common element in the introduction of
medieval histories, as well as other types of written texts, is the claim by
SIsidore of Seville, Etymologiarum sive originum libri xx, ed. W. M. Lindsay (Oxford,
1911, repr. 1957), 1.40. "Historiae est narratio rei gestae, per quam ea, quae in praeterito
fact sunt, dinoscuntur." The basic study on Isidore's works remains, Jacques Fontaine,
Isidore de Seville et la culture classique dans Espagne wisigothique, 2nd ed. (Paris: Etudes
augustiniennes, 1983). Regarding Isidore's conception and views of history, see Pierre
Riche, Education and Culture in the Barbarian West: Sixth Through Eighth Centuries,
trans. J. Contreni (Columbia, S. C.: University of South Carolina Press, 1976), 261; and
M. L. W. Laistner, Thought and Letters in Western Europe, rev. ed. (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell
University Press, 1957), 218-20. Concerning the importance of Isidore for medieval writ-
ers of history, see Dennis H. Green, Medieval Listening and Reading: The Primary Recep-
tion of German Literature 800-1300 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994),
237-8; and Leah Shopkow, History and Community: Norman Historical Writing in the
Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University Press of America,
1997), 20-1.
CopyrighDt by Journalo f the Historyo f Ideas,V olume6 8, Number2 (April2 007)
187
JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF IDEAS + APRIL 2007
the author to present events that actually occurredi n order that they not be
forgotten or lost to memory.2M oreover, a great many medieval authors
repeatedlys tressed the accuracy of their information, emphasizing,f ollow-
ing Isidore's model, that they had personal knowledge of events, or that
they had received information from reliable sources, such as eyewitnesses.3
Over the past forty years, however, and at an ever increasingp ace over
the past two decades, some historians have called into question the ability
of modern scholars to gain an accuratep icture of the past using contempo-
rary narrative accounts. One observation, which has been presented both
as a species of intellectual history and as a fundamental "problem" is the
demonstrable fact that medieval writers had a parti pris when writing.4
2 See, in this regard, Jacques Chaurand, "La conception de l'histoire de Guibert de Nogent
(1053-1124)," Cahiers de Civilisation Medie'vale 8 (1965): 381-95, particularly 382-83;
Roger D. Ray, "Medieval Historiography through the Twelfth Century: Problems and
Progress of Research," Viator 5 (1974): 33-60, here especially 43; Laurence Looze,
"Signing off in the Middle Ages: Medieval Textuality and Strategies of Authorial Self-
Naming," in Vox Intexta: Orality and Textuality in the Middle Ages, ed. A. N. Doane
and Carol Braun Pasternack (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991), 162-82,
particularly 165; Ruth Morse, Truth and Convention in the Middle Ages: Rhetoric, Rep-
resentation, and Reality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 1-13; Green,
Medieval Listening, 247; and Gabrielle M. Spiegel, The Past as Text: The Theory and
Practice of Medieval Historiography (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997),
88-90. For a thorough discussion of the contest between history as it "should have been"
and history "as it was" which does not prejudge the outcome of this struggle, see Nancy
F. Partner, Serious Entertainments: The Writing of History in Twelfth-Century England
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977), particularly 183-93.
3 See Benoit Lacroix, L'Historien au moyen age (Paris: Institut d'e'tudes medievales,
1971), particularly chapter one, and the review article of this work by Robert W. Han-
ning, History and Theory 12 (1973): 419-34; A. J. Minnis, Medieval Theory of Author-
ship: Scholastic Literary Attitudes in the Later Middle Ages (London: Scholar Press,
1984), particularly 1-20; Green, Medieval Listening, 246-48; Spiegel, The Past as Text,
88-90; Matthew Innes and Rosamond McKitterick, "The Writing of History," in Carol-
ingian Culture: Emulation and Innovation, ed. Rosamond McKitterick (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1994), 193-220, particularly, 194-96; Almut Sauerbaum,
"Accessus ad auctores: Autorkonzeption in mittelalterlichen Kommentartexten," in
Autor und Autorschaft im Mittelalter, ed. Elizabeth Andersen, Jens Haustein, Anne
Simon, and Peter Strohschneider (Tibingen: M. Niemeyer, 1998), 29-37; Sebastian
Coxon, "Zur Form und Funktion einiger Modelle der Autorenselbstdarstellung, 'Wolf-
dietrich' und 'Dietrichs Flucht,' " in (ibid.), 148-62, particularly, 151 and 162; Elisabeth
van Houts, Memory and Gender in Medieval Europe (Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 1999), 20-26; and Chris Given-Wilson, Chronicles: The Writing of History in
Medieval England (London: Hambledon, 2004), 1-20.
4 Walter Goffart, The Narrators of Barbarian History (A. D. 500-800): Jordanes, Greg-
ory of Tours, Bede and Paul the Deacon (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988),
argues (passim) that early medieval historians were not simple transmitters of plain text,
but rather sophisticated rhetoricians pursuing very clear ideological agendas. Rather than
seeing this as a problem, however, Goffart emphasizes the importance of identifying the
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