Daniel Woolf | Queen's University at Kingston (original) (raw)

Journal Articles and Book Chapters by Daniel Woolf

Early Modern Genres of History, 2024

A commentary on the issue of genre in early modern historical writing with reflections on the sev... more A commentary on the issue of genre in early modern historical writing with reflections on the several essays in this edited volume.

Labelling Times The ›Early Modern‹ – European Past and Global Now, 2023

This essay argues that recent attacks on the notion of periodization in history, while correct in... more This essay argues that recent attacks on the notion of periodization in history, while correct in pointing to the traps and limitations of periods, are at risk of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. In particular, it argues for a distinction between periodizing as a cognitive process, necessary in order to order material and make different causal and other connections, on the one hand, and periodization as a rigid set of structures that distort and constrain our sense of the past. We can and must periodize, but this needs to be a continuous, not occasional, process.

Historiography and the Formation of Philosophical Canons, 2023

Commentary on the previous chapters in the volume including the author's reflections on the bound... more Commentary on the previous chapters in the volume including the author's reflections on the boundaries between philosophy and intellectual history from a historiographical perspective; paper argues that history lacks canons at least in the same sense that philosophy has one or more of them.

History from Loss: a Global Introduction to Histories Written from Defeat, Exile, Imprisonment and Colonization, 2023

A timely and necessary challenge to the idea that history is always written by the victors."-Marg... more A timely and necessary challenge to the idea that history is always written by the victors."-Margaret MacMillan, Emeritus Professor of International History, University of Oxford "A truly global collection by a multi-generational and multinational group of authors that goes beyond histories from below and histories from the margins to reflect on histories from loss, themselves written by a similarly broad group of history-makers, from expected voices such as Thucydides and Nehru to unexpected ones such as Chimalpahin and Jane Austen. At this point when angry losers seek to rewrite the past in order to control the future, the collection is even more timely than the editors could have anticipated."-Merry E.

Studies in Medievalism vol 4, 1992

Essay exploring the origins and progress of artifact-focused antiquarianism in early modern Engla... more Essay exploring the origins and progress of artifact-focused antiquarianism in early modern England. A revised version became a chapter of author's book The Social Circulation of the Past (Oxford 2003).

“Normativity” has for over a century been a central concept in ethics, medicine and the social sc... more “Normativity” has for over a century been a central concept in ethics, medicine and the social sciences. It has not been fully explored as an element in historiography or in historical thought. The essay contends that normativity (as a meta-concept underpinning notions of the “normal” and “normalcy”) can help us understand changing attitudes to the a) possibility and b) actuality of historical phenomena, as well as c) their moral exemplarity, but only if we disaggregate three different modes or “registers” of normativity, respectively ethical, metaphysical, and phenomenal. After exploring the place of ethical normativity, avant la lettre, in historical thought and writing from antiquity to the early modern era, and the tensions created between a historicist urge to avoid normative judgments and a post-Kantian imperative to obey universal Sollen, the essay then discusses metaphysical and phenomenal normativity as filters that were applied to reported or recorded experience from the Middle Ages through the seventeenth century prior to any decision to draw moral conclusions from the subset of historical phenomena accepted as both possible and actual. The essay then argues that the advent of probability theory, combined with Baconian empiricism and Humean scepticism, gave rise to a sense of “normality” in the past. Finally, I conclude that the late Enlightenment bequeathed to modernity and post-modernity a sense of fundamental rupture (exemplified by the French Revolution, and characterized as the “historical sublime”) that we are still living with, and struggling through, as we routinely reconstruct history and our own lives in the form of discontinuous series of “new normals”, as we “renormalize” events and traumas that arguably should be regarded as beyond normalization, and as we both fetishize and aestheticize the experience of disruption, defined as a radical departure from one normality into another, attended by a decreasing capacity to judge that which is, and is not, normative.

The Spoken Word: Oral Culture in Britain 1500-1850, 2002

Chapter from A Fox and D Woolf eds The Spoken Word, examining circulation of historical knowledge... more Chapter from A Fox and D Woolf eds The Spoken Word, examining circulation of historical knowledge via social and political conversation 1660-1800

IHR Reviews in History, 2020

This essay reviews two 2020 books by Donald Bloxham: Why History? a History; and History and Mora... more This essay reviews two 2020 books by Donald Bloxham: Why History? a History; and History and Morality.

Books and Bookmen in Early Modern Britain, 2018

Explores the historical reading and reading strategies of Sarah Cowper (1644-1720) using her pape... more Explores the historical reading and reading strategies of Sarah Cowper (1644-1720) using her papers in the Panshanger collection of the Hertfordshire record office. It builds on material discussed more briefly in my 1997 essay in The American Historical Review, 'A Feminine Past'

The Oxford Handbook of the Age of Shakespeare, 2016

Discussion of the chronicles, Holinshed's included, from which Shakespeare drew materials for the... more Discussion of the chronicles, Holinshed's included, from which Shakespeare drew materials for the History Plays.

Oxford History of Historical Writing, Volume 3: 1400-1800, 2012

Survey of English and Scottish historical writing from the late Middle Ages to the Early Eighteen... more Survey of English and Scottish historical writing from the late Middle Ages to the Early Eighteenth Century

Journal of Philosophy of History, 2016

Extended discussion of Richard J. Evans' book Altered Pasts, proposing limited circumstances in w... more Extended discussion of Richard J. Evans' book Altered Pasts, proposing limited circumstances in which counterfactual hypotheses can be useful in the preliminary framing of a historical argument; examines also reasons why fictional counterfactuals are more successful than published scholarly ones.

Huntington Library Quarterly, 2013

Epilogue to a collection of essays on various aspects of the uses of the past in early modern Eng... more Epilogue to a collection of essays on various aspects of the uses of the past in early modern England

Visions of Antiquity: the Society of Antiquaries of London 1707-2007, ed. Susan Pearce, 2007

Reviews the visual representations and verbal descriptions of antiquaries in the century leading ... more Reviews the visual representations and verbal descriptions of antiquaries in the century leading to the foundation of the Society of Antiquaries in 1707.

Huntington Library Quarterly, 2005

Overview of major changes in historical thinking in early modern England; also published 2006 wit... more Overview of major changes in historical thinking in early modern England; also published 2006 within a separate hardbound volume

HISTORIOGRAPHY S ince very early times, human beings have had some sense of the past, both their ... more HISTORIOGRAPHY S ince very early times, human beings have had some sense of the past, both their own and that of their community or people. This is something that has distinguished us from other species. Having said that, historiography in the narrower sense of "intentional attempts to recover knowledge of and represent in writing true descriptions or narratives of past events" has had a rather briefer career throughout the world, though one more complex and variegated than most accounts allow. It is not possible in the space of a brief essay such as this to convey the entire richness of the human effort to recapture the past, but an effort must be made to summarize the historiographical traditions of many different regions.

Persuasions the Jane Austen Journal, 2004

Examination of Jane Austen's changing attitudes to history as a genre and to the historical gener... more Examination of Jane Austen's changing attitudes to history as a genre and to the historical generally from Northanger Abbey to Persuasion. Argues for the importance of Mansfield Park as a key transitional novel in this development.

Historians and Ideologues, ed. A.T. Grafton and J.H.M. Salmon, 2001

Examination of attitudes to age and antiquity in early modern England, building on and revising s... more Examination of attitudes to age and antiquity in early modern England, building on and revising seminal earlier essay by Sir Keith Thomas

Early Modern Genres of History, 2024

A commentary on the issue of genre in early modern historical writing with reflections on the sev... more A commentary on the issue of genre in early modern historical writing with reflections on the several essays in this edited volume.

Labelling Times The ›Early Modern‹ – European Past and Global Now, 2023

This essay argues that recent attacks on the notion of periodization in history, while correct in... more This essay argues that recent attacks on the notion of periodization in history, while correct in pointing to the traps and limitations of periods, are at risk of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. In particular, it argues for a distinction between periodizing as a cognitive process, necessary in order to order material and make different causal and other connections, on the one hand, and periodization as a rigid set of structures that distort and constrain our sense of the past. We can and must periodize, but this needs to be a continuous, not occasional, process.

Historiography and the Formation of Philosophical Canons, 2023

Commentary on the previous chapters in the volume including the author's reflections on the bound... more Commentary on the previous chapters in the volume including the author's reflections on the boundaries between philosophy and intellectual history from a historiographical perspective; paper argues that history lacks canons at least in the same sense that philosophy has one or more of them.

History from Loss: a Global Introduction to Histories Written from Defeat, Exile, Imprisonment and Colonization, 2023

A timely and necessary challenge to the idea that history is always written by the victors."-Marg... more A timely and necessary challenge to the idea that history is always written by the victors."-Margaret MacMillan, Emeritus Professor of International History, University of Oxford "A truly global collection by a multi-generational and multinational group of authors that goes beyond histories from below and histories from the margins to reflect on histories from loss, themselves written by a similarly broad group of history-makers, from expected voices such as Thucydides and Nehru to unexpected ones such as Chimalpahin and Jane Austen. At this point when angry losers seek to rewrite the past in order to control the future, the collection is even more timely than the editors could have anticipated."-Merry E.

Studies in Medievalism vol 4, 1992

Essay exploring the origins and progress of artifact-focused antiquarianism in early modern Engla... more Essay exploring the origins and progress of artifact-focused antiquarianism in early modern England. A revised version became a chapter of author's book The Social Circulation of the Past (Oxford 2003).

“Normativity” has for over a century been a central concept in ethics, medicine and the social sc... more “Normativity” has for over a century been a central concept in ethics, medicine and the social sciences. It has not been fully explored as an element in historiography or in historical thought. The essay contends that normativity (as a meta-concept underpinning notions of the “normal” and “normalcy”) can help us understand changing attitudes to the a) possibility and b) actuality of historical phenomena, as well as c) their moral exemplarity, but only if we disaggregate three different modes or “registers” of normativity, respectively ethical, metaphysical, and phenomenal. After exploring the place of ethical normativity, avant la lettre, in historical thought and writing from antiquity to the early modern era, and the tensions created between a historicist urge to avoid normative judgments and a post-Kantian imperative to obey universal Sollen, the essay then discusses metaphysical and phenomenal normativity as filters that were applied to reported or recorded experience from the Middle Ages through the seventeenth century prior to any decision to draw moral conclusions from the subset of historical phenomena accepted as both possible and actual. The essay then argues that the advent of probability theory, combined with Baconian empiricism and Humean scepticism, gave rise to a sense of “normality” in the past. Finally, I conclude that the late Enlightenment bequeathed to modernity and post-modernity a sense of fundamental rupture (exemplified by the French Revolution, and characterized as the “historical sublime”) that we are still living with, and struggling through, as we routinely reconstruct history and our own lives in the form of discontinuous series of “new normals”, as we “renormalize” events and traumas that arguably should be regarded as beyond normalization, and as we both fetishize and aestheticize the experience of disruption, defined as a radical departure from one normality into another, attended by a decreasing capacity to judge that which is, and is not, normative.

The Spoken Word: Oral Culture in Britain 1500-1850, 2002

Chapter from A Fox and D Woolf eds The Spoken Word, examining circulation of historical knowledge... more Chapter from A Fox and D Woolf eds The Spoken Word, examining circulation of historical knowledge via social and political conversation 1660-1800

IHR Reviews in History, 2020

This essay reviews two 2020 books by Donald Bloxham: Why History? a History; and History and Mora... more This essay reviews two 2020 books by Donald Bloxham: Why History? a History; and History and Morality.

Books and Bookmen in Early Modern Britain, 2018

Explores the historical reading and reading strategies of Sarah Cowper (1644-1720) using her pape... more Explores the historical reading and reading strategies of Sarah Cowper (1644-1720) using her papers in the Panshanger collection of the Hertfordshire record office. It builds on material discussed more briefly in my 1997 essay in The American Historical Review, 'A Feminine Past'

The Oxford Handbook of the Age of Shakespeare, 2016

Discussion of the chronicles, Holinshed's included, from which Shakespeare drew materials for the... more Discussion of the chronicles, Holinshed's included, from which Shakespeare drew materials for the History Plays.

Oxford History of Historical Writing, Volume 3: 1400-1800, 2012

Survey of English and Scottish historical writing from the late Middle Ages to the Early Eighteen... more Survey of English and Scottish historical writing from the late Middle Ages to the Early Eighteenth Century

Journal of Philosophy of History, 2016

Extended discussion of Richard J. Evans' book Altered Pasts, proposing limited circumstances in w... more Extended discussion of Richard J. Evans' book Altered Pasts, proposing limited circumstances in which counterfactual hypotheses can be useful in the preliminary framing of a historical argument; examines also reasons why fictional counterfactuals are more successful than published scholarly ones.

Huntington Library Quarterly, 2013

Epilogue to a collection of essays on various aspects of the uses of the past in early modern Eng... more Epilogue to a collection of essays on various aspects of the uses of the past in early modern England

Visions of Antiquity: the Society of Antiquaries of London 1707-2007, ed. Susan Pearce, 2007

Reviews the visual representations and verbal descriptions of antiquaries in the century leading ... more Reviews the visual representations and verbal descriptions of antiquaries in the century leading to the foundation of the Society of Antiquaries in 1707.

Huntington Library Quarterly, 2005

Overview of major changes in historical thinking in early modern England; also published 2006 wit... more Overview of major changes in historical thinking in early modern England; also published 2006 within a separate hardbound volume

HISTORIOGRAPHY S ince very early times, human beings have had some sense of the past, both their ... more HISTORIOGRAPHY S ince very early times, human beings have had some sense of the past, both their own and that of their community or people. This is something that has distinguished us from other species. Having said that, historiography in the narrower sense of "intentional attempts to recover knowledge of and represent in writing true descriptions or narratives of past events" has had a rather briefer career throughout the world, though one more complex and variegated than most accounts allow. It is not possible in the space of a brief essay such as this to convey the entire richness of the human effort to recapture the past, but an effort must be made to summarize the historiographical traditions of many different regions.

Persuasions the Jane Austen Journal, 2004

Examination of Jane Austen's changing attitudes to history as a genre and to the historical gener... more Examination of Jane Austen's changing attitudes to history as a genre and to the historical generally from Northanger Abbey to Persuasion. Argues for the importance of Mansfield Park as a key transitional novel in this development.

Historians and Ideologues, ed. A.T. Grafton and J.H.M. Salmon, 2001

Examination of attitudes to age and antiquity in early modern England, building on and revising s... more Examination of attitudes to age and antiquity in early modern England, building on and revising seminal earlier essay by Sir Keith Thomas

comment on papers by Penny Roberts (Warwick), Matthew Neufeld (Warwick) and Judith Pollman (Leiden)

A version of this bibliography was originally compiled for the author’s article on “Historiograp... more A version of this bibliography was originally compiled for the author’s article on “Historiography”, in volume 1 of the New Dictionary of the History of Ideas, ed. M.C. Horowitz (2005). It has been revised and more than doubled in length since then, but even so is still a “select” bibliography. The bibliography lists ethnohistorical works not commonly included in bibliographies of historiography. The emphasis is on works on English but select works in other languages, especially German, French and Italian have also been included for those wishing to follow up topics in further detail; however the reader should note that for every foreign language work listed many more have been left out. With some exceptions, individual chapters within edited volumes of essays are not listed separately unless specifically cited in the text. Conversely, where less than three chapters from an edited volume have been used, they are listed individually but there is no separate listing of the volume as a whole. Editions of primary texts are included much more selectively, either where they have been directly quoted from (for example in the longer extracts that this book features), or where they contain useful introductory or editorial matter commenting on author and text. Most such texts are listed in the footnotes at the point at which they are cited in the present work. In the case of edited collections of essays or sources with more than three editors, only the first name is listed for the sake of space. In the case of journals, typically only volume number and year will be given, not issue number within a year, though in certain exceptions (for instance, special theme issues) the number is sometimes included. NOTE: THIS BIBLIOGRAPHY WAS CLOSED EXCEPT FOR MINOR ADDITIONS IN 2010.

History and Theory, 2021

This is the pre-peer reviewed version of the following article: GETTING BACK TO NORMAL: ON NORMAT... more This is the pre-peer reviewed version of the following article: GETTING BACK TO NORMAL: ON NORMATIVITY IN HISTORY AND HISTORIOGRAPHY which will be published in September 2021 in final form at 10.1111/hith.12225. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Use of Self-Archived Versions."

Normativity" has for over a century been a central concept in ethics, medicine and the social sciences. It has not been fully explored as an element in historiography or in historical thought. The essay contends that normativity (as a meta-concept underpinning notions of the "normal" and "normalcy") can help us understand changing attitudes to the a) possibility and b) actuality of historical phenomena, as well as c) their moral exemplarity, but only if we disaggregate three different modes or "registers" of normativity, respectively ethical, metaphysical, and

An update to the global bibliography first posted on academia in mid July 2016. Additions (many p... more An update to the global bibliography first posted on academia in mid July 2016.
Additions (many pre-dating the original 2011 cut-off date and those published more recently) are signified by double asterisks ** for those who wish simply to search for additions to last year's posting.

IHR Reviews in History , 2020

A review essay on Donald Bloxham's two 2020 books.

Canadian Journai of History/Annaies canadiennes d'iiistoire XLI, winter/hiver 2006 587 Cardwell e... more Canadian Journai of History/Annaies canadiennes d'iiistoire XLI, winter/hiver 2006 587 Cardwell et de Childers, les « anciens » et les « modemes » s'affrontent, avec plus ou moins de virulence (pas toujours discrete) selon les sujets, et l'on yoit d'autres debats naitre avec le « systeme regimentaire post-modeme »-c'est le titre du dernier chapitre, qui couvre l'apres-guerre jusqu'en 1970, avant que French ne se fasse en conclusion anthropologue en soumettant ses institutions regimentaires aux six criteres de survie qu'ont definis ces specialistes. Le livre se termine par une mise en garde ; reduire comme Font fait d'aucuns tous les succes comme tous les echecs de Farmee britannique a ce seul faeteur du « sys-teme regimentaire » defie la logique et trahit la realite. Ce compte-rendu d'ampleur tres limitee ne peut faire justice au tres beau tra-vail d'historien que nous propose ici David French, avec un depouillement considerable d'archives (notamment bien sur du War Office, mais aussi de regiments qui ont aujourd'hui leurs musees, qui s'ajoutent naturellement aux deux institutions que sont le Imperial War Museum et le National Army Museum) et de revues regimentaires d'unites prestigieuses ou moins prestigieuses, sans compter les sources secondaires. La copieuse bibliographie et l'index tres detaille four-nissent d'autre part deux instruments de travail d'un interet considerable-bien au-dela de I'histoire militaire au sens strict. On aura compris que toute biblio-theque universitaire se doit de posseder ce remarquable ouvrage, qui fera date a n'en point douter. Antoine Capet universite de Rouen (France) Modernizing England's Past: English Historiography in the Age of Modernism 1870-1970, by Michael Bentley. Wiles Lectures series. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2005. viii, 245 pp. 88.95Cdn(cloth),88.95 Cdn (cloth), 88.95Cdn(cloth),34.95 Cdn (paper). As 1 write this review, word has just reached these shores of the death of Arthur Marwick, a prominent soeial historian, educator, and fierce opponent of both Marxist theorizing about the past and more reeently of postmodern undermining of the foundations of our knowledge of that past. Marwick's The Nature of History, an oft-reprinted ode to what is sometimes misguidedly called historio-graphieal positivism (a bad label that conflates empirical methodology and a critical approach to evidence with grand progressivist social theories in the Comtean tradition), was first published in 1970, making him a late entrant into the debates covered in Michael Bentley's new book, the terminal year of which is also 1970. Bentley is one of the leading authorities on modem British historiography, and it is a very good thing to have this book-originally his Wiles Lectures for 2003-in print. Students and faeulty alike generally greet historiography with dread and anticipation of boredom (that is not my own view, but like Professor Bentley, I am in the smallish minority who have made it something of a career specialization). Often this attitude is richly deserved, as a great many works pro

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, a... more JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

A Concise History of History, 2019

Abridged and heavily revised version of same author's 2011 book A Global History of History. Inte... more Abridged and heavily revised version of same author's 2011 book A Global History of History. Intended for classroom use, at approximately half the length of the older book. Includes glossary of terms and questions at the end of each chapter for classroom discussion.

A Global History of History, 2011

One volume history of historical thought and writing throughout the world. Illustrated, and inclu... more One volume history of historical thought and writing throughout the world. Illustrated, and includes extensive text extracts, focused 'subject boxes' on particular issues, and timelines.

Page 1. cmnm READING HISTORY IN BRITISH HISTORY DR Woolf ? Page 2. Page 3. Page 4. This book focu... more Page 1. cmnm READING HISTORY IN BRITISH HISTORY DR Woolf ? Page 2. Page 3. Page 4. This book focuses on the 'after-life' of historical texts in the period between the arrival of printing in England and the early eighteenth century. ...

Page 1. THE SOCIAL CIRCULATION OF THE PAST EngIish HistoricaI CuIture 1500-1730Daniel Woolf , . &... more Page 1. THE SOCIAL CIRCULATION OF THE PAST EngIish HistoricaI CuIture 1500-1730Daniel Woolf , . ' ENC $ IN 1RIT Page 2. Page 3. Page 4. Daniel Woolf is Professor of History and Dean of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Alberta, Edmonton. ...

... Author: Woolf, DR. PUBLISHER: University of Toronto Press (Toronto and Buffalo). SERIES TITLE... more ... Author: Woolf, DR. PUBLISHER: University of Toronto Press (Toronto and Buffalo). SERIES TITLE: YEAR: 1990. PUB TYPE: Book (ISBN 0802058620 ). VOLUME/EDITION: PAGES (INTRO/BODY): xxii, 377 p. SUBJECT(S): Great Britain; History; Historiography; Intellectual life ...

Local Identities in Late Medieval and Early Modern England, 2007

festschrift for Robert Tittler. Several essays on aspects of identity formation and complication ... more festschrift for Robert Tittler. Several essays on aspects of identity formation and complication between the fourteenth and the seventeenth centuries.

ORAL CULTURE IN BRITAIN, 1500-1850 EDITED BY ADAM FOX & DANIEL WOOLF ... The spoken word ... more ORAL CULTURE IN BRITAIN, 1500-1850 EDITED BY ADAM FOX & DANIEL WOOLF ... The spoken word Oral culture in Britain ijoo—i8jo edited by Adam Fox and Daniel Woolf Manchester University Press Manchester and New York distributed exclusively in the USA by Palgrave ...

The Oxford history of historical writing, 2011

Editors' Introduction. 1. Chinese Official Historical Writing under the Ming and Qing. 2. Th... more Editors' Introduction. 1. Chinese Official Historical Writing under the Ming and Qing. 2. The Historical Writing of Qing Imperial Expansion. 3. Private Historiography in Late Imperial China. 4. A Social History of Japanese Historical Writing. 5. Writing History in Pre-Modern Korea. 6. Southeast Asian Historical Writing. 7. Indo-Persian Historical Thought and Writings: India 1350-1750. 8. Persian Historical Writing under the Safavids (1501-1722/36). 9. Ottoman Historical Writing. 10. Islamic Scholarship and Understanding History in West Africa before 1800. 11. Philology and ...

2 volume reference work featuring short biographical pieces on historians and longer substantive ... more 2 volume reference work featuring short biographical pieces on historians and longer substantive pieces on national traditions, themes, controversies etc. Global in range covering all inhabited continents from antiquity to the present.

Marginalia: the Los Angeles Review of Books, 2021

Review of new book on sixteenth century papal historiography by Stefan Bauer, with focus on Onofr... more Review of new book on sixteenth century papal historiography by Stefan Bauer, with focus on Onofrio Panvinio

review of Arthur B. Ferguson Utter Antiquity

Among the popular beliefs that one is likely to find in any society, whether it be a largely oral... more Among the popular beliefs that one is likely to find in any society, whether it be a largely oral cu!ture of the sort studied in recent times by anthropologists, or a highly literate culture of the kind that predominates in the modem west, there is certain to be a large component which deals expressly with the past. A curiosity as to one's own origins, and the origins of one's material surroundings, is not the exclusive prerogative of literate societies, and still less of the educated elite in those societies; whether or not popular beliefs and traditions about the past actually reflect views held higher up the social ladder is thus in a certain sense-a non-question. It is more important to come to terms with what a given group, class or community believed about its own past, local or national, mythic, legendary or "historical," than it is to categorize these beliefs rigidly as either "popular" or "elite," though the cultural historian should properly remain aware at all times of their social context. 2 The purpose of this essay is to offer a variety of examples illustrating several types of popular belief about the past, current in England between the end of the Middle Ages and the early eighteenth century. The word "popular" is here taken to mean "widely held" within a broad cross-section of society (even if only local society), a cross-section which generally included the middling and poorer elements of a community, but which might in some instances embrace members of an educated elite increasingly disposed to be crilical of "vulgar error. " 3

The American Historical Review, 1997

Page 1. A Feminine Past? Gender, Genre, and Historical Knowledge in England, 1500-1800 DR WOOLF T... more Page 1. A Feminine Past? Gender, Genre, and Historical Knowledge in England, 1500-1800 DR WOOLF THE LITERARY AND INTELLECTUAL ACTIVITIES OF EARLY MODERN ENGLISHWOMEN have received much attention. ...

Abridged and heavily revised version of same author's 2011 book A Global History of Histo... more Abridged and heavily revised version of same author's 2011 book A Global History of History. Intended for classroom use, at approximately half the length of the older book. Includes glossary of terms and questions at the end of each chapter for classroom discussion.

The English Historical Review, Sep 13, 2022

A global history of historical writing, thought and the development of the historical discipline ... more A global history of historical writing, thought and the development of the historical discipline from the ancient world to the present. This is a definitive guide to human efforts to recover, understand and represent the past, bringing together different historical traditions and their social, economic, political and cultural contexts. Daniel Woolf offers clear definitions of different genres and forms of history and addresses key themes such as the interactions between West and East, the conflict of oral, pictographic and written accounts of the past and the place of history in society and in politics. Numerous textual extracts and illustrations in every chapter capture the historical cultures of past civilizations and demonstrate the different forms that historical consciousness has taken around the world. This book offers unique insights into the interconnections between different historical cultures over 3,000 years and relates the rise of history to key themes in world history. Special attention is paid to connections between the modern dominance of Western forms of historical consciousness and the impact of European empires on other parts of the world.

Renaissance Quarterly, 2012

Manchester University Press eBooks, Jul 30, 2018

F or the past two or three centuries we have become rather used to thinking of history as somethi... more F or the past two or three centuries we have become rather used to thinking of history as something found in books. Just as we ourselves are trained to read and criticize documents, and to take these as the basis of all historical knowledge, so we tell our students which books to go off and read, what 'authorities' to rely on, which journals to consult, and so on. The advent of the Internet has changed the way in which written texts circulate, but has not altered our perception of history as something that is textualized rather than heard about. There were certainly history 'books' (or at least graphical equivalents to books) as far back as Herodotus, but it is only since the eighteenth century that the book has become the vessel par excellence for conveying stories about the past. It was then that history really became a commercially successful genre, with every bookseller and publisher having to lay in a good stock of the most famous modern and ancient historians from Gibbon and Voltaire via Clarendon and Guicciardini back to Livy and Thucydides. This bookishness is likely to make us forgetful of the oral and oratorical origins of history, and of the fact that Clio was, originally, a muse-a performative goddess rather than a scholar. There's not much left of the era when Herodotus stood in the middle of Athens to read his Histories, or of that time, 2,000 years later, when the Italian condottiere Federigo da Montefeltro assembled his courtiers to listen to readings from ancient historians. Public readings today are usually of poems or novels, and few people would turn up at Blackwell's or Waterstone's to hear a chapter of the latest thing in historical erudition trip resonantly off an Oxford don's tongue. And yet there are still some contexts in which we do prefer to speak, rather than

Journal of British Studies, Mar 11, 2016

Canadian journal of history, Dec 1, 2006

Journal of British Studies, Oct 1, 2005

Palgrave Macmillan UK eBooks, 2007

at Boulder. She has written various studies of English social history that span the late medieval... more at Boulder. She has written various studies of English social history that span the late medieval/early modern divide, including books entitled Controlling Misbehavior in England, 1370-1600 and Working Women in English Society, 1300-1620. She is currently working on local experiments with poor relief in England, 1350-1598. Her second area of interest is African women during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. With an African anthropologist she has written a study of women in Uganda, 1900-2003, and she is now finishing a book about Yoruba women in Nigeria, 1820-1960.

Routledge eBooks, Apr 21, 2023

Commentary on the previous chapters in the volume including the author's reflections on t... more Commentary on the previous chapters in the volume including the author's reflections on the boundaries between philosophy and intellectual history from a historiographical perspective; paper argues that history lacks canons at least in the same sense that philosophy has one or more of them.

The English Historical Review

Renaissance Quarterly, 2017

trian aristocracy, and within late seventh-century political hagiographies. In chapter 3, Rosenwe... more trian aristocracy, and within late seventh-century political hagiographies. In chapter 3, Rosenwein reads Alcuin’s manual of emotional management as a significant self-help text that did not assume emotional care was a pastoral duty left to religious personnel alone. Chapter 4 studies Aelred’s writings on love and friendship within twelfth-century monastic communities such as his own at Rievaulx (but also intended as potentially applicable in the political world beyond) alongside meanings of love in the poetry of troubadours at the court in Toulouse. Chapter 5 treats Thomas Aquinas’s consideration of passions, demonstrating how Aquinas’s exploration expanded upon previous conceptualizations with his own consideration of emotional sequencing. Chapter 6 moves to the world of the Burgundian chroniclers, mysticism, andMargery Kempe. Here a new emotional driver, pity, comes to the fore, and a more dramatic emotional experience finds expression. Nonetheless, Rosenwein emphasizes how different emotional communities retain their specificity, discoverable through different source types. While geographically close, Kempe’s account of theatrical weeping was far removed from the quiet feeling that infuses the epistles of the sober Pastons. Chapter 7 considers Jean Gerson’s contrasting music of the voice with the silentmusic of the heart—internalized emotions—heard by god. Chapter 8 rapidly moves from a brief discussion of Reformers’ emotional crafting and the popularity of melancholy amongmainly learnedmen, through the despair and comfort witnessed in gathered church believers’ conversion testimonies, to the emotional reporting of Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn. Chapter 9 explores more deeply Thomas Hobbes’s notion of passions and motions in Leviathan, conceptualizing emotion as movement following contemporary scientific ideas such as Galileo’s theory of inertia. Readers familiar with Rosenwein’s work will recognize much that she has explored in previous essays. Here, however, insights into lived practices and expressions, as the extant sources allow us to perceive them, are structured within a far broader historical framework that profitably seeks to identify key changes and particular moments of prominence for emotional theorization and concepts. A must for all scholarly libraries.

The English Historical Review, 2006

We are very nearly at the sesquicentennial of the publication of the book that virtually invented... more We are very nearly at the sesquicentennial of the publication of the book that virtually invented the Renaissance in its modern formulation, Jacob Burckhardt's Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy. Not surprisingly, the world of the condottieri and the humanists, and of the artists ...

Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies, 1999

The American Historical Review, 1990

Published by the I'rcs* Syndicate of the University of Cambridge The Pitt Building, Trumping... more Published by the I'rcs* Syndicate of the University of Cambridge The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2 1RP 40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011, USA 10 Stamford Road, Oakleigh, Melbourne 3166, Australia ©Cambridge University Press 1987 First ...