The problem of the historiography of the Renaissance

David G Terrell
May 2010

The consideration of Renaissance historiography was daunting, at first. My knowledge of the broad
corpus of Renaissance history is limited, but improving. As I began to read Denys Hay’s The Italian
Renaissance in its Historical Background, I was grateful to find his exposition upon this subject—which
now informs my own views, subject to future elucidation.

Hay’s basic premise concerning the difficulty facing those who would wade into the general history of the
Renaissance stemmed from the enormous body of detailed critical work already accomplished. He finds
the effort necessary to obtain a fair knowledge of Renaissance history, in toto, is daunting in the extreme.
From his observations, one concludes that digesting the massive body of literature deters all but the most
brilliant, short-sighted, or vain of historians from any attempt to survey it (Hay 1961, 5).

Hay further asserts that, because of the great amount of material and the few historians having mastered
the whole, there is little fully-informed discussion of Renaissance history in comprehensive, global terms.
Historical discussions have therefore devolved away from general, holistic considerations and settled
instead upon more narrow topics, more easily mastered by a single individual in a professional lifetime.
Hay seems to imply the existence of four groupings of Renaissance history, and that one can frame the
types of history orthogonally along the extremes of two axes. The first being historiography versus
methodology and the second contrasting Rankean political, social and economic histories versus those
that describe cultural development (Hay 1961, 5) (see fig. 1).

Figure 1. Binary Modes of Renaissance History as Implied by Hay (1961).

According to Hay, each of these four types of history seemed to ignore the other until the 1960s when he
and others began to attempt a synthesis of the historical perspectives regarding the Renaissance (Hay
1961, 7). I believe the spark behind the change was the institutionalization of the Annales paradigm
between 1956 and 1968. I assert this as it was the Annales scholars who stepped away from traditional
narrative political and cultural history in favor of more inclusive and analytical histories that involved the
other human sciences, especially geography, sociology and anthropology—and have labeled as such in
 2
Terrell DG, The problem of the historiography of the Renaissance

the graphic model presented As I read more of the assigned reading, I was pleased to see Bouwsma make
the same connections by reference to the Annales historian Fernand Braudel, who led the movement
(Terrell 2009, 1) (Bouwsma 1979, 6-7).

Recent historiographers like Laura Chandler have acknowledged this shift to a multi-disciplinary
approach to Renaissance history. She describes the work of gender and feminist historians such as Scott,
Roper, Kelly-Godal and Willen, who used anthropological tools in innovative ways; to examine early
modern European history along the boundaries between public and private spheres and inform history the
aspects of history hidden beneath the biases of the times (Chandler 1999, 15).

Hay hints around the existence of a hidden history of the common folk. He does include the uneducated
but does not explicitly include women—but he leaves a big loophole through which gender historians can
work. He does this by asserting that the innovations of the Renaissance were formed “in the castle rather
than the cottage” and took centuries before they were dispersed to “simple men and women” (Hay 1961,
4). Hay’s foundation lets feminist historians like Chandler build their interpretations without breaking
Hay’s framework and he implicitly confirms her hypothesis concerning the history of early modern
Europe, that it was written “from the male perspective” (Chandler 1999, 11).

Since Hay’s time, there seem to have been more general histories of the Renaissance—and the literature
has continued its growth since Hay’s remarks, fifty years ago. The problem of massive volume still
daunts the historian who considers the idea of embracing its totality. At least, I am daunted… and I’ll stop
now.

This week’s historiographical discussion pleasantly allowed me to “get my mind wrapped around” the
evolution of our collective view of the period. As I’ve surveyed the literature and began enlarging my
library, buying some of the more recent books recommended in the class bibliography I had not already
procured (8 or 9 in hand, so far), I have been very pleased to see the resurgence of narrative history.

I’ve been also fascinated by the diversity, or perhaps I should say, the subjectivities historians have used
to construct their work. Perhaps this means I am becoming a connoisseur of history. Perhaps this means I
am beginning to see that I am viewing the past through my contemporary point of view. Nevertheless, I
am seeing just how the world of experience, especially those of people distant from us in time, is
valuable. To determine and describe the “thoughts and visions, moods and emotions and devotions of
articulate people” is difficult, especially as we are trying to rediscover and reshape both our historical
framework (in the way we conceive of and write history) and the syllabus (wondering even if there was a
renaissance) (Southern and Bartlett 2004, 100-102).

But it sure is fun,

David Terrell
Herndon, Virginia
 3
Terrell DG, The problem of the historiography of the Renaissance

Bouwsma, William J. "The Renaissance and the Drama of Western History." The American Historical
Review (American Historical Association) 84, no. 1 (February 1979): 1-15.

Chandler, Laura J. "Feminist Historiography of Early Modern European Women." Access: History
(History Dept/History Postgradutes' Association, The Univ. of Qld) 2, no. 2 (1999): 11-20.

Hay, Denys. The Italian Renaissance in its Historical Background. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1966.

Southern, R.W., and Robert Bartlett. "History and Historians: Selected Papers of R.W. Southern." Google
Books. Wiley-Blackwell. 2004. http://books.google.com/books?id=oGOx63iDq6QC (accessed May 15,
2010).

Terrell, David G. "Fernand Braudel and the Annales: History’s Dialectic Of Space and Time." Scribd.com
Portfolio of David G Terrell. January 21, 2009. http://www.scribd.com/doc/21020175/Fernand-Braudel-
and-the-Annales-History%E2%80%99s-Dialectic-Of-Space-and-Time (accessed May 6, 2010).

© David G. Terrell, 2009-2010, except where otherwise noted, content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-
Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License. For permission to reprint under terms outside the license, contact
davidterrell80@hotmail.com.