Three Ways to Be Alien: Travails and Encounters in the Early Modern World

Notes

Notes 1. Introduction 1. Annamayya, God on the Hill: Temple Poems from Tirupati, trans. Velcheru Narayana Rao and David Shulman (New York, 2005), p. 5. 2. Jean Aubin, Le Latin et l’Astrolabe, III: Études inédites sur le règne de D. Manuel, 1495–1521 (Paris, 2006), p. 211. 3. YahyahimselfsignedhislettersinArabicasAbuZakariyaYahyabinMuhammad, with Ta‘fuft being a place-name; cf. Bernard Rosenberger, “Yah .yā U Tā‘fuft, 1506–1518: Des ambitions déçues,” Hespéris-Tamuda 31 (1993): 21–59, reference on p. 21. 4. In this context, see for instance Miles Ogborn, Global Lives: Britain and the World, 1550–1800 (Cambridge, 2008). 5. See the wide-ranging, but rather inconclusive, survey by Sabina Loriga, “La biographie comme problème,” in Jacques Revel, ed., Jeux d’échelles: La microanalyse à l’expérience (Paris, 1996), pp. 209–31. 6. Pierre Bourdieu, “L’illusion biographique,” Actes de la Recherche en Sciences sociales 62–63 (1986): 69–72. Significantly, in this brief essay, Bourdieu cites the theorist and practitioner of the nouveau roman Alain Robbe-Grillet. His main concern appears to be to restitute the fragmentary and nonteleological content in the account of a life. 7. Jacques Le Goff, Saint Louis (Paris, 1996). Also see the review of the book by William Chester Jordan in Speculum 72, no. 2 (1997): 518–20, which concludes by reminding us that Le Goff’s question “is not a call to the extreme and nihilistic critiques of some armchair postmodernists; it is rather an earnest exhortation to new and profounder engagement with the sources of the past.” 8. Roland Barthes, “Le discours de l’histoire,” in Barthes, Œuvres complètes, Tome II, 1966–1973, ed. Éric Marty (Paris, 1994), pp. 417–27. 9. Support given to variants of the concept of the “modal biography” seems to derive largely from this position. For examples of biographical studies of such a type, see Paul S. Seaver, Wallington’s World: A Puritan Artisan in SeventeenthCentury London (Stanford, 1985); Jacques-Louis Ménétra, Journal of My Life, introduction and commentary by Daniel Roche, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (New York, 1986); Alain Corbin, The Life of an Unknown: The Rediscovered World of a Clog Maker in 19th-Century France, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (New York, 2001). For a South Asian example, see Rupert Snell, “Confessions of a 17th- 180 Notes to Pages 4–6 Century Jain Merchant: The Ardhakathānak of Banārasīdās,” South Asia Research 25, no. 1 (2005): 79–104. 10. Edoardo Grendi, “Microanalisi e storia sociale,” Quaderni storici 35 (1977): 506– 20; for a useful reflection on this author and his work, see Osvaldo Raggio and Angelo Torre, “Prefazione,” in Edoardo Grendi, In altri termini: Etnografia e storia diunasocietàdianticoregime(Milan,2004),pp.5–34.Itisofcourseanelementary fact that one cannot reconstruct a distribution from a single observation. For an interesting attempt to reconcile microhistory and a statistical approach, see Raul Merzario, Il paese stretto: Strategie matrimoniali nella diocesi di Como, secoli XVI–XVIII (Turin, 1981), which has in turn been critiqued for abandoning the larger context by Cristiana Torti, “Un paese troppo stretto? A proposito di un libro di Raul Merzario,” Società e storia 17 (1982): 657–82. An attempt to reconcile various quite disparate positions may be found in Giovanni Levi, “Les usages de la biographie,” Annales ESC 44, no. 6 (1989): 1325–36, which already differs from the position taken by the same author in his study of the exorcist Giovan Battista Chiesa; see Levi, Inheriting Power: The Story of an Exorcist, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (Chicago, 1988). 11. Roberta Garner, “Jacob Burckhardt as a Theorist of Modernity: Reading The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy,” Sociological Theory 8, no. 1 (1990): 48–57. For the original text, see Jacob Burckhardt, Die Kultur der Renaissance in Italien, ed. Horst Günther (Frankfurt, 1989). For Cellini’s text, see Orazio Bacci, ed., La vita di Benvenuto Cellini (Florence, 1961). 12. Inevitably, Burckhardt’s view has not been retained by modern scholarship; cf. VictoriaC.Gardner,“Hominesnonnascuntur,sedfiguntur:BenvenutoCellini’sVita and the Self-presentation of the Renaissance Artist,” Sixteenth Century Journal 28, no. 2 (1997): 447–65. Also see the implicit counterargument (and attempt to “rescue” Burckhardt, and in passing throw a lifeline to the Renaissance), in Randolph Starn, “A Postmodern Renaissance?” Renaissance Quarterly 60, no. 1 (2007): 1–24. 13. Stephen J. Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-fashioning: From More to Shakespeare (Chicago, 1980), pp. 2–9. For a critical but appreciative reading, see John Martin, “Inventing Sincerity, Refashioning Prudence...