Memory, Family, and Self ― Tuscan Family Books and Other European Egodocuments (14th-18th Century)

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.

Giovanni Ciappelli is Associate Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Trento. His many publications on Renaissance and early modern Italy include Carnevale e Quaresima. Comportamenti sociali e cultura a Firenze nel Rinascimento (Rome 1997), Un ministro del Granducato di Toscana nell'eta della Restaurazione. Aurelio Puccini (1773-1840) e le sue “Memorie” (Rome 2007), and Fisco e societa a Firenze nel Rinascimento (Rome 2009). Together with Patricia Lee Rubin he has edited Art, Memory and Family in Renaissance Florence (Cambridge 2000).