I freely admit that part of the reason why I love this book is that it is based in precisely the type of history-writing I adore. I don't want to read about farmers and fishermen. I want kings and queens, dynasty politics, religious intrigue, great thinkers and stories. There are limits to the stories you can tell about the farmers and fishermen. And, perhaps more importantly, it is all about the pleasure of recognition. Part of the appeal is the connection made between two parts of history which I have always approached separately.
I tend to compartmentalise history. I think of James I/VI and I think Macbeth and Shakespeare, Gunpowder Plot, Francis Bacon and his position between Elizabeth I and Charles I. Thinking of the movements in Europe at the same time, my mind runs to the religious conflicts, the Habsburgs, Bohemia, the (second) Defenestration of Prague and the Thirty Years' War. Similarly, Scandinavian history in my mind has got its own separate box, and there is another for the Mediterranean. I always get a rush when I get to join them up and see how they fit together. I suppose that makes me a geek.
Part of the excitement for me is quite simply that such connections make it easier to remember things. I have a particular love of 16th century European history - in England, in France, in the Netherlands, in the Osman Empire, in the newly discovered lands of America, Asia and Africa - and it's always both fun and mnemonically useful to discover ties between them. Like, say, the realization that the young Duke d'Alençon from the French royal house (and of course from Dumas' Reine Margot) is the same person as that French suitor for Queen Elizabeth, and additionally was offered the throne of a Belgium that never manifested at one point. Or how William the Silent, the big Dutch hero of the Eighty Years War, was married to a daughter of Coligny, once again of Reine Margot fame. In a way it all makes sense as nobility and royalty married foreigners all the time, and there were only so many notable candidates to go around, but still connections like those create ties between various national histories that most people, like you said, tend to compartmentalize.
So, well, I don't know as much about the 17th century (or it'd have to be France), but I entirely get the "rush" you describe.
I am glad it is not just me.
The book as a whole sounds interesting, though I don't have a particular interest in the Rosicrucians, and I don't imagine I'd appreciate the more literary-theory-inspired aspects as much.
I may have exaggerated that aspect. It may not be as apparent to others. She was a very highly respected historian.
*MySmiley*
structured procrastinator
structured procrastinator
The Rosicrucian Enlightenment by Frances Yates
04/11/2010 03:22:41 PM
- 1821 Views
I do the same thing with history.
04/11/2010 05:08:59 PM
- 1021 Views
Re: I do the same thing with history.
04/11/2010 05:12:03 PM
- 1190 Views
I too have long been fascinated by Rosicrucianism and all its constituents.
04/11/2010 07:23:13 PM
- 936 Views
Re: I too have long been fascinated by Rosicrucianism and all its constituents.
05/11/2010 01:05:47 PM
- 960 Views
Nice review
05/11/2010 09:42:27 PM
- 1344 Views
Re: Nice review
05/11/2010 09:56:52 PM
- 965 Views