| Synopsis: |
Love, Friendship and Faith in Europe 1300-1800 offers exciting new studies of the meanings and forms of friendship in early modern Europe. While family and community have been extensively explored in recent decades, the more elusive experience of friendship is treated historically by this volume. Friendship is situated in several specific social frames - seventeenth-century German townsfolk, beggars in eighteenth century London, women in the households of Stuart England. Readers will encounter reciprocity and amity, intimacy and trust embedded in the idioms and materials contexts of early modern Europe: bedroom and tavern, philosophical salon and kitchen. The contributors not only make imaginative use of materials ranging from trial records to biblical translations, but also connect friendship to several current historiographical interests: in sexuality, identity, gender, association and the forging of bonds of trust. The papers have been prompted by the intellectual challenge of Alan Bray's notable book The Friend (Chicago, 2003). Friendship is a subject whose time has come.The volume engages with contemporary interests in the making of identity, and demonstrates the workings of religious idioms of amity, charity and love in the making of friendship among early modern people. This volume will, therefore, be of absorbing interest to all those interested in history and literature, opening up the private as well as public lives of early modern people. |