The Renaissance In The Fields: Family Memoirs Of A Fifteenth-century Tuscan Peasant [Paperback]

Paolo Squatritti (Author)

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Product Details

Paperback: 1 pages
Publisher: Penn State University Press; abridged edition edition (Aug 24 1999)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0271018798
ISBN-13: 978-0271018799
Product Dimensions: 2 x 1.4 x 0.2 cm
Shipping Weight: 204 g

Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)

Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #2,166,631 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Product Description

Book Description

In the early 1980s, Duccio Balestracci discovered in a Sienese archive two account books kept from 1450 to 1502 by a Tuscan peasant named Benedetto del Massarizia. Benedetto knew how to read but not how to write. Infected by the urban habit of detailed personal record keeping, he asked various of his literate acquaintances to put into writing the details of his daily affairs. The resulting account books offer an unparalleled glimpse into the economic and social world of late medieval peasants. In Renaissance in the Fields, Balestracci uses these account books and a host of supporting archival records to explore the lives of Benedetto and his family over the course of the fifteenth century. In Benedetto we see how country people could organize land and capital and protect themselves, at least a little, from rapacious landlords and urban administrators. By capturing the changing realities of life in the countryside, Renaissance in the Fields offers the best introduction to how the peasant economy really worked, and to how most people actually lived during the Italian Renaissance.

About the Author

Duccio Balestracci is Professor of History at the University of Siena, Italy. Renaissance in the Fields is an edited and revised translation of his 1984 book, La Zappa e la retorica. Paolo Squatriti teaches history at the University of Michigan, where Betsy Merideth pursues her graduate studies.

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4.0 out of 5 stars Academic Esoterica, Feb 2 2003

waiting2bdeleted "delete this" (gone) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Renaissance In The Fields: Family Memoirs Of A Fifteenth-century Tuscan Peasant (Paperback)

This is one of those books written by a University Professor, which covers a curious, non-mainstream topic in Italian history. An overlooked topic, until recently, Professor Balestracci focuses on the lifestyles of the peasants, rather than their more illustrious peers.

Because of the nature of the subject matter, it can get a bit dry by analyzing and summarizing related data gleaned from diaries and account books. As an academic read, I would give it a five star, but as a history book, marketed to the public, it goes down a notch.

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