- Vladimir has been at HSE University since 2004.
- Scientific and teaching experience: 40 years.
Education, degrees and academic titles
- Academic title: Associate Professor
Doctor of Historical Sciences: Russian State University for the Humanities, specialty 07.00.09 "Historiography, source studies and methods of historical research", dissertation topic: "The individual in European autobiographies: from the Middle Ages to the New Time"
Candidate of Historical Sciences: Institute of General History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, specialty 07.00.03 "General History", thesis topic: "Renaissance Autobiography and Self-Consciousness of a Person: Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini (Pius II)"
Specialty: Rostov-on-Don State Pedagogical Institute, Faculty: History and English, specialty "History"
Professional interests
Cultural history of the European Middle Ages and early modern times; history of autobiography; professionalization of historical knowledge in the 18th - early 19th centuries; modern historiography.
Participation in editorial boards of scientific journals
2012: Member of the Editorial Council, AvtobiografiЯ: Journal on Life Writing and the Representation of the Self in Russian Culture.
Conferences
- Comparative history days (St. Petersburg). Report: First Printed Overviews of World History for “Slavonic-Russian People” (A Contribution to the Social History of Historical Knowledge Across Borders)
- Life-Stories on the Move: Subaltern Autobiographical Practices from the Early Modern Period to the First World War (Berlin). Report: Official Self-Accounts as Means of Governmentality in the Imperial Russia
- X International Conference of the Study Group on Eighteenth-Century Russia (Strasbourg). Report: Historical knowledge at Moscow University until the beginning of the 19th century.
- Life Stories, Personal Narratives, and Ego-Documents: Problems and Perspectives from German, Central and Eastern European History (Cambridge). Report: In Search of the New European Past: Rewriting History in the First Person Singular
- Seminar of the Group of Eastern, Slavic and Neo-Hellenistic Studies, University of Strasbourg (Strasbourg). Report: My Life for the State: Clerical Autobiographies of Soviet Citizens
Publications
Books 4
Articles and Book Chapters 61
Article Zaretsky Yu.P. // New Literary Review. 2019.Vol. 157.No. 3.P. 107-127.
Article Zaretsky Yu.P. // Emergency reserve. Debates about politics and culture. 2018.Vol. 118.No. 2.P. 263-265.
Philosophical and Cultural Interpretations of Russian Modernization... L.: Routledge, 2017. Ch. 7.P. 89-101.
Article Zaretsky Yu. P. Pastor and Freemasons (From the Early History of Moscow University) // Emergency Reserve. Debates about politics and culture. 2017.Vol. 113.No. 3.P. 258-273.
Chapter of the book Zaretsky Yu.P. // In the book: Universitas historiae. Collection of articles in honor of Pavel Yurievich Uvarov / Otv. ed .:. M.: IVI RAN, 2016. Ch. 14.S. 139-148.
Chapter of the book Zaretsky Yu.P., Shirle I. Preface // In the book: Dictionary of basic historical concepts: Selected articles in 2 volumes. 2nd ed. / Per. from German:; comp .:,, I. Schirle; otv. ed .:,, I. Schirle; under total. ed .:,, I. Schirle; scientific. ed .:,, I. Schirle. T. 1-2. M.: New Literary Review, 2016. Ch. 1.S. 5-22.
Chapter of the book Zaretsky Yu.P. // In the book: ARS HISTORICA. Collection in honor of Oleg Fedorovich Kudryavtsev / Compiled by: A. K. Gladkov; otv. ed .: A.K. Gladkov. M., St. Petersburg. : Center for Humanitarian Initiatives, 2015.S. 153-173.
Article Zaretsky Yu.P. // Emergency reserve. Debates about politics and culture. 2014. T. 98. No. 6. S. 329-338.
Article by Yu.P. Zaretsky // AvtobiografiЯ: Journal on Life Writing and the Representation of the Self in Russian Culture. 2013.Vol. 2.S. 13-23.
Article Zaretsky Yu.P. // Emergency reserve. Debates about politics and culture. 2013. T. 90. No. 4. S. 220-228.
Chapter of the book Zaretsky Y., in: In stolis repromissionis. Svettsi and Holiness in Centralna and Iztochna Europa/ Ed. by A. Angusheva-Tihanov, M. Dimitrova, R. Kostova, R. Malchev. Sofia: ROD, 2012. P. 47-60.
Book chapter Avanyan G.G., Vagina M.Yu. , Zaretsky Yu. P. // In the book: "About my life" by Girolamo Cardano / Per. from ital .; comp .:. M.: Publishing House of the National Research University Higher School of Economics, 2012.S. 11-21.
Article Zaretsky Yu.P. // Emergency reserve. Debates about politics and culture. 2012. No. 5 (85). S. 179-193.
Article Zaretsky Yu.P. // Emergency reserve. Debates about politics and culture. 2012. No. 3. S. 218-232.
Chapter of the book Zaretsky Yu.P. // In the book: Humanitarian readings of the Russian State Humanitarian University-2010. Theory and methodology of humanitarian knowledge. Russian studies. Social functions of the humanities. Collection of materials. M.: RGGU, 2011.S. 141-148.
Chapter of the book Zaretsky Yu.P. // In the book: Russian Historical Encyclopedia / Otv. ed .: V.V. Ishchenko. T. 1.M .: OLMA Media Group, 2011.S. 104-110.
Chapter of the book Zaretsky Yu.P. // In the book: Russian Historical Encyclopedia / Otv. ed .: V.V. Ishchenko. T. 1.M .: OLMA Media Group, 2011.S. 419-420.
Chapter of the book Zaretsky Yu. P. // In the book: Culture of the Renaissance. Encyclopedia T. 2. Part 1. M.: ROSSPEN, 2011. S. 102-103.
Chapter of the book Zaretsky Yu. P. // In the book: The Long Middle Ages. Collection in honor of Professor Adelaida Anatolyevna Svanidze / Otv. ed .: A.K. Gladkov,. M.: Kuchkovo field, 2011.S. 413-425.
Chapter of the book Zaretsky Yu. P. // In the book: Culture of the Renaissance. Encyclopedia T. 2. Part 1. M.: ROSSPEN, 2011. S. 474-475.
A. V. Korenevsky... Issue 5: Foundation. Rostov n / a: Faculty of History of the Southern Federal University, 2011.S. 54-68.
Chapter of the book Zaretsky Yu. P. // In the book: Culture of the Renaissance. Encyclopedia T. 2. Part 2. M.: ROSSPEN, 2011. S. 305-306.
Chapter of the book Zaretsky Yu. P., Dazhina V.D. // In the book: Culture of Renaissance. Encyclopedia T. 2. Part 2. M.: ROSSPEN, 2011. S. 570-573.
Chapter of the book Zaretsky Y.,, in: Saluting Aron Gurevich: Essays in History, Literature and Related Disciplines... Boston, Leiden: Brill, 2010. P. 301-322.
Chapter of the book Zaretsky Y., in: Les écrits du for privé en Europe du Moyen Âge à l "epoque contemporaine: Enquêtes, analyzes, publications... Pessac: Presses Universitaires de Bordeaux, 2009. P. 103-132.
Article Zaretsky Yu.P. // Emergency reserve. Debates about politics and culture. 2009. T. 67. No. 5. S. 261-276.
Chapter of the book Zaretsky Yu.P. // In the book: Cogito. Almanac of the history of ideas / Otv. ed .: A. V. Korenevsky... Issue 4. Rostov n / a: Logos, 2009. S. 311-324.
Chapter of the book Zaretsky Yu.P. // In the book: Cogito. Almanac of the history of ideas / Otv. ed .: A. V. Korenevsky... Issue 4. Rostov n / a: Logos, 2009. S. 447-454.
Article Zaretsky Yu.P. // Emergency reserve. Debates about politics and culture. 2008. T. 58. No. 2. S. 220-231.
Chapter of the book Zaretsky Yu. P. // In the book: Social history. Yearbook. 2008 / Ed. ed .: N.L. Pushkareva. SPb. : Aletheia, 2008.S. 329-340.
Chapter of the book Zaretsky Yu.P. // In the book: Feudalism: concepts and realities / Otv. ed .: A. Gurevich, S. Luchitskaya,. Moscow: Institute of General History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 2008. S. 130-162.
Chapter of the book Zaretsky Yu.P. // In the book: Räume des Selbst. Selbstzeugnisforschung transkulturell. Vienna, Cologne, Weimar: Bohlau Verlag GmbH & Cie, Wien Koln Weimar, 2007.S. 187-196.
Chapter of the book Zaretsky Yu.P. // In the book: Man of the XV century: the facets of identity. Moscow: IVI RAN, 2007.S. 250-272. / Resp. ed .: A. Svanidze, V. A. Vedyushkin. M.: Institute of General History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 2007. S. 250-272.
Chapter of the book Zaretsky Yu.P. // In the book: Cogito. Almanac of the history of ideas / Otv. ed .: A. V. Korenevsky... Issue 2. Rostov n / a: Logos, 2007. S. 201-240.
Edited 8
Article by A. Abizade / Transl .: Yu. P. Zaretsky, V. V. Zelensky // Emergency reserve. Debates about politics and culture. 2010. T. 69. No. 1. S. 91-106.
Book Zaretsky Yu.P., Bezrogov V.G., Kosheleva O.E. / Under total. ed .: Yu. P. Zaretsky, V. G. Bezrogov, O. E. Kosheleva; scientific. ed .: Yu. P. Zaretsky, V. G. Bezrogov, O. E. Kosheleva. SPb. : Aletheia, 2019.
Preprints 6
About myself
As a student, I first wanted to be an archaeologist, but then changed my mind. Archeology mainly talked about the material world created by a man of the past, and it was this man himself that was interesting to me. As a result, in my senior years, I became interested in studying autobiographies and other personal documents of the Italian Renaissance. Later, after defending my Ph.D. thesis, the area of my scientific interests began to expand rapidly. At first, these were personal testimonies created in Western Europe before the beginning of modern times, then I turned to ancient Russian autobiographical texts, to plots of modern and recent history, not related to autobiography. All these activities were accompanied by reflections on the "craft of the historian" in our day.
Today, the area of my scientific interests covers three broad topics: "The history of the culture of the European Middle Ages and early modern times", "History and theory of autobiography", "Theory and history of historical knowledge". Although it is not limited to them - life sometimes suggests such exciting subjects for scientific research and asks such unexpected questions that you have to be distracted from the main activities and master new areas of knowledge.
I have been working at the HSE Faculty of Philosophy since its foundation in 2004. I teach courses "General History", "History of Western Civilizations", "Western European Autobiography as a Historical and Cultural Phenomenon", "Academic communication and writing", "Basic Forms of Student Writing in Contemporary Universities" (in English) and others. I am the head of the scientific and educational group for interdisciplinary research in autobiography, the participants of which, along with students and postgraduates, are well-known Russian and foreign scientists.
Since 1995 he has worked periodically as a visiting researcher and professor at American and European universities and research centers. I am absolutely convinced that this foreign experience turned out to be extremely important and useful for my scientific and teaching activities.
Visiting Researcher / Professor
University of Tübingen; University College, London; University of Helsinki; University of Sheffield; University of St Andrews; University of California, Berkeley; Columbia University, New York; European University Institute, Florence; Central European University, Budapest; Universidad de Deusto, Bilbao; Max-Planck-Institut für Geschichte, Göttingen; Maison des sciences de l "homme, Paris; Collegium Budapest.
Lectures and seminars at foreign universities and research centers
University of Strasbourg; University of Glasgow; Finnish Literature Society; University of Tampere; University of Helsinki, University of Sheffield, University of St Andrews, University of California (Berkeley), University of California (Riverside), Montclair State University, Universidad de Deusto (Bilbao), University of Amsterdam, Central European University (Budapest), Collegium Budapest, Eötvös Loránd University (Budapest), University of California (Los Angeles), University of Maryland (College Park), California State University (Stanislaus)
Research projects
Russian Modernization: Philosophical and Cultural Interpretations (Finnish Center of Excellence in Russian Studies) (2014-2016);
Forgotten Historians, Forgotten History: Bio-Bibliographic Research (HSE Science Foundation, 2015-2016); Autobiographies of the Early Modern Age: Historical and Cultural Contexts and Social Practices (HSE Science Foundation, 2013-2014); Historical knowledge at a Russian university: The origin of the present (HSE Science Foundation, 2012-2013); Subject and culture: the basics of interdisciplinary research of the problem (Center for Fundamental Research, National Research University Higher School of Economics, 2012); First-Person Writing, Four-Way Reading (European Science Foundation, 2011); Subjectivity and Identity (CFI SU-HSE, 2010);
(Scientific Foundation of the State University - Higher School of Economics, 2010-2011);
Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe: Historisches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland (Deutsche Historische Institut in Moskau, Volkswagen Stiftung, 2009-2013); (Scientific Foundation of the State University - Higher School of Economics, 2009/2010); First Person Writings in European Context (Paris IV, European Science Foundation, 2008-2010)
International research grants
Carnegie Fellowship (2016); Kone Fellowship (2013); Erasmus Mundus Scholar Fellowship (2012); CEU-HESP Professorial Fellowship (2009); Erasmus Mundus Triple I Short-term Fellowship (2008); Max-Planck-Institut für Geschichte Short-term Fellowships (2004, 2005, 2006); Maison des sciences de l'homme Short-term Fellowships (2004, 2006); Collegium Budapest Senior Fellowship (2002-2003); Research Support Scheme Research Grant (1997-2000); Fulbright Senior Fellowship (1995-1996); Regional Scholar Exchange Program Fellowships (1995, 2000)
480 RUB | UAH 150 | $ 7.5 ", MOUSEOFF, FGCOLOR," #FFFFCC ", BGCOLOR," # 393939 ");" onMouseOut = "return nd ();"> Dissertation - 480 rubles, delivery 10 minutes, around the clock, seven days a week
Zaretsky Yuri Petrovich. The individual in European autobiographies: from the Middle Ages to the New Age: 07.00.09 Zaretsky, Yuri Petrovich The individual in European autobiographies: from the Middle Ages to the New Age (Source study aspect of the problem): Dis. ... Dr. East. Sciences: 07.00.09 Moscow, 2005 393 p. RSL OD, 71: 06-7 / 74
Introduction
Chapter 1. Historiographic and source study contexts of research 30
1.1. The history of the individual as a historiographic problem 31
1.2. Autobiography as a Source for the History of the European Individual 65
1.3. Source classifications of memoir and autobiographical literature 82
Chapter 2. Historical and cultural features of European autobiography before the beginning of modern times 89
2.1. The Phenomenon of Early Autobiography 89
2.2. The meanings of early autobiography (the legend of St. Alexei, the man of God ") 123
Chapter 3. The Individual in Autobiographies of the Christian West 154
3.1. Historiographic and source study problems of studying Western European autobiographical works of the XIV-XVI centuries. 154
3.2. Transformations of Subjectivity (Autobiographical Childhood Stories) 161
3.3. Pope Humanist Pius II's "Testimony of Myself" 191
Chapter 4. Outside Western Christendom 285
4.1. Another Europe: Non-Western Christian Autobiographical Sources and Their Study 285
4.2. Russian medieval autobiographical stories 293
4.3. Jewish Autobiographical Tales in Western Europe 351
Conclusion 383
Notes 394
List of used sources and literature 518
Application. Translations of autobiographical sources 563
Introduction to work
This work is devoted to the source study of the history of the individual in the period between the Middle Ages and the New Age - an era that in historiography is usually regarded as the beginning of modern European civilization. In a narrower sense, it is a study of autobiographical texts aimed at finding out how in Europe of the XIV-XVII centuries. people talked about themselves and their lives.
A keen interest in autobiography in our days is most directly connected with the sharpening of the attention of humanitarians to the problems of the individual (or "subject"). For the historian, this interest is ambiguous. On the one hand, today there are more and more authoritative ideas about a person as a multidimensional phenomenon that does not have a clearly visible center and consists of various practices and values, and even that the usual image of a person as a separate, unique, integral world disappears as a “face inscribed on the sand "1. On the other hand, scientists continue to teach that a person's idea of himself, this or that image of his own I, is an integral part of human existence, i.e. in a sense, it is a transcultural and transhistorical phenomenon. The fact that every person possesses free will somehow separates himself from others and asks himself the question "who am I?" seems quite self-evident and undeniable. “It is impossible to imagine a person in society,” writes A.Ya. Gurevich, who, in one way or another, would not have personal self-awareness and, in a certain sense, would not be a person ”2. This kind of ontology does not at all reject variability, the possibility of the historical perspective of considering such categories as "individual", "individuality", "personality", "subject". On the contrary, many researchers consider their study to be key for understanding the transformations of European civilization, which at a certain moment in its history went beyond the traditionalist
4 society and has become in general terms the way we see it today, i.e. fundamentally individualistic 3.
Formulation of the problem. The central issues in the study are questions related to the source analysis of various features of the self-image of Europeans in autobiographical works of the 15th - 17th centuries. What exactly and how did people talk about themselves in these texts at this time? Why did they do it? What biographical models, and what narrative strategies did they use in doing so? How do their stories about themselves relate to the concept of modern European individualism from a historical perspective? What are the semantic boundaries of individual authorship in these stories? What is common and special in the self-image of Europeans belonging to different cultural traditions? What are the general trends in the transformation of European autobiographical sources of the early modern era?
These questions largely stem from the recognition of the otherness of the culture of the period under consideration in comparison with modern European and, accordingly, the otherness of the meanings contained in the analyzed sources. From this recognition flows the urgent need to understand what meant a story about himself, familiar to a European of New and Modern times (that is, living “inside” an individualistic type of culture), for a person who lived in Europe centuries ago, in a society that remained, in its essence, traditionalist? When considering autobiographical sources in the work, therefore, special attention is paid to "strangeness", to something that causes surprise and needs clarification, to some other, in comparison with the established in the New time, ways of depicting the authors of their own I.
The designated problems require not only the involvement of various types of autobiographical sources, but also the use of various research approaches. In addition to the methods of classical source study, aimed at the reconstruction of the "behind"
autobiographical texts of the characteristics of self-awareness and
self-identification of the authors, the study also uses methods of narratological analysis aimed at revealing not so much “what” the authors think about themselves, but “how”, with the help of what narrative strategies and linguistic means they tell about themselves.
The variety of sources of work also helps to avoid the tendency to "read" them from only one specific theoretical position. To this it should be added that any one-sidedness of their understanding, in principle, contradicts the solution of an important task of this study: showing the variety of forms and methods of self-image of the European individual in the early modern era. It should also be emphasized that the very concept of the work and its structure are based on the thesis that the historical structure and source study can only be divorced analytically. As for the practice of concrete research, they are fundamentally inseparable and constitute a dialectical unity 4.
Refusal of one-sidedness when considering autobiographical sources leads to the formulation of the task of rethinking the traditional model of heroic liberation of the individual self, according to which the individual was “discovered” in the Christian West, one of the obvious evidence of which is autobiographical texts and other “ego documents”. Its setting is also due to the fact that a number of directions of philosophical thought of the XX century, especially its last decades, significantly shaken the usual idea of the existence in a person of a hidden inner core that constitutes the essence of his I. As a result, the once generally accepted ideas about the unexpected birth of the individual I in the Renaissance (other options - in the first centuries of Christianity, in the XII century, during the Reformation) and the steady progress of individualism in European history gradually cease to satisfy the humanities. Today they are increasingly turning to the search for a different understanding and different ways of describing the transformations of the European subject in history, based on the new postclassical
knowledge. The profound changes that have taken place in the world since its inception also speak in favor of rethinking the traditional model of “discovering the individual”. The changes that have affected, among other things, the very concept of "individualism", once proclaimed the basis of Western civilization. At the beginning of the third millennium, the belief that individualism is an unconditional universal value of mankind finds fewer and fewer supporters.
The purpose and objectives of the work. The purpose of this work is to carry out a source study analysis of various models and methods of stories of Europeans about themselves and their lives, tracing the dynamics of their changes during the transition from the Middle Ages to the New Age and their conditioning by specific historical and cultural circumstances. Achievement of this goal requires a comprehensive solution of the following tasks: consideration of the basic concepts of the history of the European individual, formed in the historiography of the second half of the 19th - early 21st centuries; defining the theoretical foundations of the source study of the phenomenon of autobiography in Europe at the turn of the New Age; identifying the corpus of the most representative autobiographical sources; development of methods for reading them; carrying out a comprehensive analysis of autobiographical texts of the 15th - 17th centuries; determining the comparative characteristics of autobiography in various European cultural traditions.
Scientific novelty dissertation research consists, firstly, in the implementation of approaches based on the recognition of the historical and cultural conditionality of various forms of autobiographical sources and their plurality. Secondly, in considering autobiographical sources from a pan-European perspective, i.e. in the unity of three cultural traditions: Western Christian, Eastern Christian and Jewish. And, thirdly, in the interdisciplinary nature of the analysis of the phenomenon of early European autobiography and the use of various methods of interpretation
7 sources. The work also develops and implements an original source study method for reading early autobiographical works, based on the recognition of the unity of three components that generate autobiographical meanings: the Author, the Text and the Reader.
Theoretical foundations of the work. The theoretical and methodological basis of the work is historicism, understood as a critical current of thought, insisting on the paramount importance of the historical context for the interpretation of any specific source. Interpreted in this way, historicism has two sides. First, it presupposes the need to place any statement or statement made in the past in the context of its time; second, it recognizes that any judgment about the past reflects the interests and preferences of the time when it was made. Historicism, therefore, calls for a critical attitude both to what the past tells about itself and to the interpretations of these stories in subsequent eras 5.
The tasks set, as well as the variety of sources used, require the use of various methods of modern source analysis. The work, insofar as they relate to the historiography of the problem and the methodology of analysis of early autobiographical texts, examines the philosophical concepts of subjectivity, literary and linguistic theories of autobiography. It uses the methods of historical anthropology, microhistory, historical hermeneutics, narratology, comparative and gender analysis, explores the possibilities of a common cross-cultural view of the history of European autobiography, as well as comparative analysis of autobiographical writings. The study uses specific methods for studying the history of the European individual, developed in Russian historiography (L.M.Batkin, A.Ya. Gurevich); the provisions of the theory of autobiography are considered, which make it possible to determine the historical mobility of the semantic boundaries of the concept of "autobiography" (F. Lejeune, J. Guesdorf);
8 the experience of rethinking the traditional understanding of the subject and its historical transformations in poststructuralism (M. Foucault) is taken into account.
A variety of approaches to the analysis of sources avoids severe restrictions and aims to trace the richness of the meanings of early autobiographies, establishing a dialogue with them. In addition to searching for answers to previously formulated questions, the task of this source study dialogue is to "talk" the texts, to find out what they can "themselves" say about the historical variability of concepts such as "author", "I", "my life" , "A story about myself."
Source study approaches. Today, both specialists in the field of the theory of history and many practical historians emphasize the importance of source study for historical science. Indeed, if history is “knowledge obtained from sources,” then it “represents what the various types traces left by us from the past ”6. From this we can conclude that source studies are the basis of historical knowledge. “The real problems of historical epistemology,” writes Paul Ven, “are the essence of the problem of source study, and at the center of any discussion about knowledge of history should be the following:“ knowledge of history is what its sources do ”7. Thus, historical source study today is not only an auxiliary historical discipline, as it was thought until recently. It is a field of knowledge that “develops ... specific
theoretical and cognitive problems of fundamental importance. "
An important feature of modern historical source study (as well as the humanities in general) is the inventory and problematization of basic concepts that have long and firmly rooted in the set of research "tools". Such epistemological reflection allows a more critical approach to the process of production of historical knowledge, to look at it with a fresh eye and see new research horizons. One of the striking examples of this kind of reflection is the recent article by the famous German medievalist Otto Gerhard Axle, which considers the concept
9 "Historical source". Relying heavily on Droysen's approaches, Axle historizes and problematizes the concept of "historical source", shows how its various interpretations (from Ranke to today's discussions about historical memory) depend on the epistemology and the theory of historical knowledge "behind it" 9. It is difficult to disagree with Axle's main thesis about the historical variability of the content of the concept he analyzes. However, the call in his work to abandon the very term "historical source" on the grounds that it is "still inevitably and openly associated with empiricist and metaphysical epistemologies" 10 seems somewhat hasty. Since today the practicing historian continues to consider his "craft" in the categories of subject-object relations (yet?), He absolutely needs a specific "historical" designation of the subject of his efforts, a simple and understandable linguistic sign to all. In this situation, the term "source", for all its archaism and misleading connotations ("origins", etc.), continues to play the role of such a generally accepted sign. Some other substitute for it, for example, “historical material”, would hardly be more appropriate for most practicing historians, including those who categorically reject “the widespread view of the past as a collection of historical facts and the sources that report them” 11.
The source study approaches to the personal study of documents, which are of particular interest to us in this work, have a long history. Back in the second half of the 19th century. I.G. Droysen considered the historical source primarily as a product of human activity, containing the subjective side of human existence. The source, he wrote, is “everything that allows us to look through the eyes of past generations at their the past, i.e. memoirs and written testimonies surrounding their ideas about him. " Accordingly, Droysen paid special attention to the personality of this “other” in general and to the “subjective range of sources” in particular. Reasoning
10 about criticism of sources, he saw one of its tasks as clarification of “what is brought into the presentation by the personality of the narrator himself” 13. It is his purpose, the historian explains, and "gives us the necessary criterion for determining the category of sources." For a researcher, therefore, it is extremely important "whether the message was intended for one or several, or for all, for what purpose it was recorded, whether it is personal diary entries or addressed to contemporaries, descendants, or it was intended for teaching, practical application, entertainment" fourteen . Arguing about the psychological interpretation of sources, he also focuses on the subjective side of human existence, into which the researcher must penetrate: “personality as such has its own yardstick not in history, not in what it does, does or endures there. She has preserved her own, most intimate sphere, in which she ... communicates with herself and with her God, in which is the true source of her will and being ... "15.
Particular influence on the development of personal approaches in the historiography of the first half - mid-XX century. provided the ideas of V. Dilthey, who in his "Introduction to the Sciences of the Spirit" proclaimed that "the ability to comprehend the Other is one of the most profound theoretical and cognitive problems" 16. The most important for the German thinker was the concept of "life" and its cultural and historical realities. An individual person, according to Dilthey, has no history, since he himself is this history: it is history that reveals what he is. The historian, as a cognizing subject, is also himself included in the historical process: thus, one subject-object cognizes and creates history.
Dilthey assigned a special role in the knowledge of the past to biographical and autobiographical sources. “How can you deny,” he exclaimed, “that biography is of lasting importance for understanding the complex interconnections of the historical world! After all, there is a connection between the depths of human nature and the universalization of historical life, a connection,
discoverable anywhere in history. " And he added: “the initial here is the connection between life itself and history” 17. Moreover, an autobiography, according to Dilthey, is even more significant than a biography, since “it contains the conjugation of external, single events with something internal ... Here unity was first created” 18.
The personal method of historical research developed by the German thinker through its "traces" in the present, thus, formed a new attitude of the historian to his subject, focused his attention on the "human" dimension of the past, as well as on the need for unity of understanding and interpretation. A similar attitude to the historical source was developed in the Russian historiography of the 20th century.
One of the most prominent followers of Dilthey in Russia, A.S. Lappo-Danilevsky devoted considerable space in his writings to the question of "alien animation" 19. The Russian historian brings to the fore the problem of cognition of the “alien I” and the need for the researcher's reflection in the process of this cognition. “A historian,” he writes, “can come closer to a scientific and psychological understanding of the former psyche only through a scientific analysis of the elements of his own mental life and signs of someone else’s, already recognized by him ...” 20. At the same time, Lappo-Danilevsky is aware of the epistemological difficulties of reproducing someone else's subjectivity (in his terminology of “animation”): that consciousness in which someone else's animation is reproduced: "I" cannot stop being "I" even at the moment of sympathetic experience of the alien "I". Such an experience, association and conclusion by analogy usually comes down to the reproduction of not someone else's "I" in oneself, but a more or less successful combination of some elements of his psyche ... "21. He presents the process of cognition of "alien animation" in the course of research as follows: the historian "seems to be trying on the most suitable states of his own
12 consciousness to the external detection of someone else's animation analyzed and systematized by him, counterfeits it, etc .; he has to artificially ... put himself in conditions under which he can cause it, etc., even if only a few times. Only after such research can he reproduce in himself that very state of consciousness that he considers necessary for a proper understanding of other people's actions ... "22. Thus, as a modern researcher notes, “the scientist realized his goal of creating an“ integral and systematic doctrine of sources, ”since the works created by people (historical sources) constitute in their totality that real object, without which, in principle, the existence of humanitarian knowledge is impossible. scientific "23.
In recent decades, the ideas of A.S. Lappo-Danilevsky were developed in the works of O.M. Medushevskaya, who devoted a large series of works to the theory of source studies in the context of modern humanitarian knowledge 24. In these works, the researcher substantiates the idea of source study as a "special method of knowing the real world" of the humanities, which have now acquired a new status. The essence of this interdisciplinary method, explains O.M. Medushevskaya, “lies in the fact that the historical source (the product of culture, the objectified result of human activity) acts as a single object of various humanities with a variety of their subjects of study. Thus, it creates a unified basis for interdisciplinary research and integration of sciences, as well as for comparative historical analysis ”25.
O. M. Medushevskaya shares the concept of a historian's work as a reconstruction, which is dominant in today's humanitarian knowledge, but emphasizes that such a research reconstruction of the past (as well as its interpretation) is possible only thanks to the preserved monuments of this past. Her special attention is paid to the personal aspect of source study: “source study paradigm of humanitarian
13 cognition orients the researcher towards the study of specific objects - cultural phenomena, works (products), which make it possible to obtain knowledge about a person by interpreting empirical data - fragments of the culture under study ... ”27. In general, according to Medushevskaya, the key point of the source study paradigm of the methodology of history is the understanding of the source "as a product of purposeful human activity, a cultural phenomenon." Such an interpretation of it, in turn, “directs toward a systematic study of sources, toward an appeal to the entire volume of cultural works (in a broad sense), created in the process of human activity ...” 29.
A new direction in historical source study, in line with the personal study of documents, was recently identified by A.L. Yurganov's concept of "source study of culture". The need for such a direction today, according to the author, is dictated by the tendency to dehumanize modern historiography, one of the indicators of which is the state of affairs in historical anthropology. To overcome this tendency, Yurganov calls for the development of a source study approach to cultural phenomena, which would fully contain the “human dimension” of the past and have a new vision of the tasks of its research. “In the humanities,” he writes, “there is still no theoretical substantiation of the source study of culture as a sphere of studying the goal-setting of a person.” Accordingly, the author proposes "to fill the theoretical gap and understand the need for a new cognitive synthesis." It should be noted that the author does not create a clear picture of the new direction he has announced. He only designates it as a constituent part of historical phenomenology, and also indicates some of its foundations and principles. One of the important reasons for this new direction is the absolutization of the value of the source. “The source study of culture,” writes Yurganov, “postulates that for him there are no and cannot be sources that are unreliable. Any source exists in the mythically shaped space of the culture under study.
14 Reconstruction is aimed at the hermeneutic disclosure of the Other's self-awareness ”36. Thus, as noted by A.V. Karavashkin, “in the foreground is the principle of the primacy of the source, its intra-text dominant, self-sufficiency” 7.
We add that A.L. Yurganov to create a new direction in source study, apparently, is fully characterized by those searches and the difficulties that have recently fallen to the lot of Russian historians-practitioners with a taste for theorizing.
Source analysis in research.
Determination of historical conditions and specific circumstances of the origin of the source. The work poses the task of reconstructing (in a broad historical and cultural plan and in each specific case separately) the historical conditions for the appearance of an autobiographical text. At the same time, special attention is paid to the fact that “the source is a phenomenon of a certain culture: it arises in specific conditions and cannot be understood and interpreted outside of them” 39. Each of the analytical chapters of the study (chapters 2-4) contains corresponding sections devoted to the study of the historical and cultural circumstances of the emergence of individual autobiographical works. This aspect of source study is especially emphasized in connection with the analysis of the autobiographical "Book of Life" by St. Teresa of Avila.
Problematization and historicization of the concept of "author". Present the study proceeds from the thesis that “the concept of authorship of a work in the context of various types of culture can be represented in a variety of ways” 40. This approach is largely due to the development of the concept of "author" as a function 41 in the theoretical constructions of R. Barthes and M. Foucault, as well as in the works of medievalists and historians of the early modern period of the last decades 42. In the present study, the problem is specially considered in Ch. 2 on the material of a number of Western European autobiographical works of the 13th - 15th centuries, as well as in chapters 3 and 4.
3. Layering / sizing the functioning of the work in the socio-cultural
community. Since the historical source means “the product
purposeful human activity ", one of the aspects
source analysis is the study of copyright texts and, in
in particular, “a critical reading of the message that I wanted to convey
the author of the work ". Such a critical reading is possible only in
as a result of tracking the functioning of a work in a particular
culture 44. Ch. 2 works that pose this problem are entirely devoted to
consideration of various aspects of the functioning of autobiographical
works in the culture of Christian Europe in the Middle Ages and the early New
time. It addresses questions about the goals and intentions of the authors.
autobiographical essays, about their addressees, about their perception by the reader,
on the use of these compositions in social practice, etc.
4. Content analysis and source interpretation. Third and fourth
chapters of the work are entirely devoted to the analysis of content and interpretation
autobiographical works. The main research task is
at the same time it is bilateral in nature. First, to discover and designate those
meanings that were invested in the work by its author and his readers-
contemporaries. Secondly, to go beyond such an interpretation and
consider the source as a cultural phenomenon (or, more precisely, that “textual
community ”, of which he was a part). Autobiographical essay
therefore appears in the course of analysis as part of the reality of the past, and as part of
the reality in which we ourselves are. As a result of such a change
research position, the same text is considered for a decision
two different, albeit closely related tasks.
5. Source study synthesis. An interpretation of this kind has
aims to come to a deeper and fuller understanding
autobiographical works of the turn of the Middle Ages and the early New
time, “to overcome cultural remoteness, the distance separating
reader from a text alien to him "and, ultimately," to include the meaning of this text in the current understanding "45.
In the conclusion of the work, the possibility of source synthesis in a different vein is investigated. This is an opportunity to pose general questions to European autobiographical works of the 15th - 17th centuries belonging to different cultural traditions.
The study proceeds from the fact that the heuristic significance of the concept of "historical source" remains far from exhausted. At the same time, the historical variability and epistemological conditionality of the content of the concept itself, as well as its “secondary nature” in relation to the questions that the researcher asks to the past, seem quite obvious. Since source study studies not individual documents, but a system of relations: man-work-man, and in it "primary attention is paid to the characteristics of the author, the circumstances of the creation of the historical source, its significance in the context of the reality that gave rise to it" 46, the source study perspective is of particular importance for the study of problems individual self-awareness, embodied in autobiographical texts. It should be added that this kind of synthetic source study approach to autobiographical works is still poorly developed.
Selection and classification of texts.
Selection. The study is based on the analysis of the most representative sources from the point of view of the tasks set in the work: European autobiographical works of the 15th - 17th centuries, related to the Eastern Christian, Western Christian and Jewish cultural traditions. In a number of cases, based on the objectives of the study, the work also refers to the texts of an earlier period - the Middle Ages.
Among the Western European autobiographies, the focus is on the "Notes on Memorable Deeds" by the humanist Pope Pius II and "The Book of Life" by Carmelite nun Teresa of Avila.
"Notes of Memorable Deeds" is one of the most original stories about himself during the Renaissance. Its author, Italian writer and poet Enea Silvio Piccolomini (1405-1464), elected in 1458 by Pope Pius II, became famous for his oratory and a variety of literary and historical works. As the head of the Christian church, he acquired the fame of one of the most active reformers of the 15th century, an ardent supporter of a new crusade, designed to free Christians from the threat of enslavement by the Turks.
"Notes" in terms of genre are difficult to define unambiguously. They contain the author's story about his life, descriptions of the most important political events, his wanderings and sights seen, church affairs, nature and much more. The main distinguishing feature of the author's self-image in this work is that he “stylizes” his own image in accordance with the heroic models of ancient and Christian traditions.
The Book of Life by Teresa of Avila (1515-1582) is a different type of composition, a “spiritual autobiography,” that is, such a story about his own life, in which the greatest attention is paid to the description of the inner world: the individual experiences and reflections of the author. This feature makes the "Book" a valuable source for the study of the individual self-consciousness of a person in the 16th century. The fact that this autobiographical story was written by a woman also opens up the prospect of her gender reading.
Teresa of Avila or Teresa Jesus is one of the most famous female mystics and at the same time one of the most authoritative spiritual mentors of the Roman Catholic Church. She was the initiator of the reform of the Carmelite Order and the founder of new monastic cloisters, a Christian writer, whose spiritual experience of communicating with God through mental prayer gained wide recognition, first in Spain and then in the rest of the Catholic world. Teresa was canonized in 1622
18 The Roman Church, later became revered as the heavenly patroness of Spain, and in 1970 by Pope Paul VI she was recognized as the first female teacher of the Catholic Church.
A number of texts are considered in the work in connection with the problem of subjectivity in the authors' portrayal of their childhood. These include "Confessions" of St. Augustine (354 - 430), "On the Events of My History" by Girald of Cambria (1146 - 1223), "Life" of Peter of Murrone (Pope Celestine V) (1215 - 1292), "Monody" by Guibert Nozhansky (1053 - 1121), "Life Account" by Giovanni Conversini da Ravenna (1343 - 1408) and others. 1571), On My Life by Girolamo Cardano (1501-1576). In connection with the problem of medieval authorship - "Life" of St. Anselm of Canterbury (1033 - 1109), "On the events of my history" by Girald of Cambria (c. 1146 - 1223); "Life" by Pietro del Murrone (Celestina V) (1215 - 1296); "Book" by Margarita Kempiyskaya (c. 1373 -after 1438).
The problems of the individual in the Eastern Christian tradition are analyzed mainly on the basis of six Russian autobiographical works: "Teachings" by Vladimir Monomakh (1053 - 1125), "First Epistle" to Andrei Kurbsky by Ivan the Terrible (1530 - 1584), "Story of Life" by Martyry Zelenetsky (7 -1603), "Legends of the Anzersky skete" by Eleazar of Anzersky (? -1656), "Life" of Avvakum (1620 or 1621 - 1682) and "Life" of Epiphanius (? -1682). Particular attention is paid to the textual analysis of Epiphany's autobiographical Life. Historians of the literature of the Russian Middle Ages have gone almost unnoticed one amazing feature of this autobiographical document, which strikingly distinguishes it from most other autobiographical works of the medieval Christian tradition: Epiphany's story about himself to a large extent consists of descriptions of his bodily experience, his physical sensations and states.
The main sources when considering the problems of the history of the individual in the Jewish tradition are two of the most striking autobiographical works created before the beginning of modern times: "The Life of Yehuda" by the Venetian rabbi Leon da Modena (1571 - 1648) and "Notes" by the merchant Glikl from Hamburg (1646/7 - 1724).
Until recently, The Life of Yehuda was considered a minor work of Modena. However, today it is regarded as a unique historical evidence not only of the Jewish, but also of the whole European cultural life of the early modern period.
Glikl's Notes is the only autobiographical composition written by a Jewish woman before the beginning of modern times. In the work, it is analyzed in connection with the problem of the individual experience of motherhood.
The objectives of the dissertation research involve the use of other types in addition to autobiographical sources. Among them, a special group is made up of versions of the legend of St. Alexei, the man of God, dating back to the 10th - 17th centuries. (Greek-Latin, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, German and Russian), acting as a kind of single "megatext" of medieval Christian culture, designed to reveal the meanings of medieval autobiography.
Classification. Orientation in the variety of autobiographical sources created in Europe before the beginning of modern times requires their classification. In this work, it is based on the following criteria:
First, the belonging of the work to a number of autobiographies (i.e. retrospective stories of the authors, which consistently describe their lives) 47.
Secondly, belonging to a particular cultural tradition (Western Christian, Eastern Christian, Jewish).
Thirdly, representativeness, i.e. the possibility of obtaining answers to the questions formulated in the work about the methods of self-image of the individual.
Fourthly, gender differences, due, on the one hand, to the fact that autobiographical works in the designated period were created not only by men, but also by women, on the other, by the obvious differences between “male” and “female” stories about themselves.
These criteria were the most important in the process of selecting specific research sources, as well as determining its structure.
Necessary restrictions. The objectives of the study, its "questionnaire", as well as its chronological framework presuppose the imposition of certain restrictions in the choice of autobiographical sources. As a result of these inevitable restrictions on the periphery of research attention, such famous autobiographical stories as "The Story of My Disasters" by Peter Abelard, "Life" by Benvenuto Cellini, "Experiments" by Michel Montaigne or "Life" those less familiar to most of today's readers, on the contrary, come to the fore (for example, The Notes of Pius II, The Book of Life by Teresa of Avila, The Life of Epiphanius, The Life of Yehuda by Leon da Modena).
Another limitation is associated with the interpretation of early modern Europe as a whole. In the work, this integrity is understood not only in the geographical, but also in the historical and cultural sense. We can say that it is about the Christian-Jewish (or Judeo-Christian) European autobiography between the Middle Ages and the New Age. It is clear that early modern Europe was not only Christian and Jewish, but also Muslim. In this regard, it would be of interest to consider also Arabic autobiographical works written in Spain, Italy and other European countries. This task, however, turned out to be
49 u-h"
beyond the capabilities of the author. Partly for the same reason, but, most importantly, still because of the chronological framework of the work, it was necessary to abandon the consideration of Byzantine autobiographical sources 5. It should also be emphasized that the concept of "European autobiography of the Eastern Christian tradition" in the work is completely synonymous with the concept of "Old Russian (or
21 "Russian medieval") autobiography ". This is due to two circumstances: firstly, with the fact that ancient Russian autobiographical works (before the beginning of the 18th century) are the most numerous in this tradition, and, secondly, with the fact that they are the most personal-colored, i.e. most representative for the purposes of this work.
Conceptual apparatus of the research.
Autobiography. It has become a truism to say that autobiography stubbornly escapes theoretical definitions, 51 and this is especially true of early modern autobiographical texts. It seems appropriate, however, to designate one basic position as an operational interpretation of the term. Autobiography is understood in this work not as a genre, but only, speaking in modern language, a certain type of discourse, as “a biography of a person, written by himself” 52. And at the same time, as a kind of unity, consisting of three components - autos, bios, graphe, each of which is problematic in its own way. This is the most general and broadest interpretation of the term, which is hardly possible in theoretical and literary studies, apparently, is still quite acceptable for the purposes of historical research.
Finally, it should be clarified that the use of the new European neologism "autobiography" and its derivatives in relation to the works of the early modern times and especially the Middle Ages in this work is rather arbitrary and forced - the very concept of "autobiography" and the corresponding literary genre entered European languages only for the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries. Until that time, in Europe, the stories of the authors about their lives, neither for themselves, nor for their contemporaries, did not constitute any definite semantic unity 53. In any case, they did not have a single name. The creators and scribes of such stories most often simply added in the titles to the word “life”, “life”, “vita” or “la vie” an indication that they were composed by the hero himself on the principle: “life X, written by himself”. However, a more appropriate term than
22 “Autobiography” (despite its obvious anachronistic nature), to denote “stories about oneself” written by Europeans before modern times, obviously simply does not exist 54.
Early autobiography."Early autobiography" in the work refers to works of an autobiographical nature, created in Europe before modern times: from "Confessions" by Augustine to "Confessions" by J.-J. Russo. This designation emphasizes the dissimilarity of the testimonies about oneself left by the people of the Middle Ages and the early modern times, and the works of the autobiographical genre of the 19th - 20th centuries.
Autobiography. The task of considering autobiographical sources as derivatives / components of specific contexts, set in the work, involves going beyond textual analysis, tracing the functioning of autobiographical works in certain specific historical and cultural circumstances. It is this functioning, i.e. the production and consumption of autobiographical meanings in a certain historical and cultural context and is further denoted by the concept of "autobiography".
Individual and personality. The concept of "individual" in the work is interpreted extremely broadly. It means not only a separate person who has an idea of himself (the image of the I), endowed with will and is an actor (actor), but also a person as a social phenomenon, a subject, the outlines of which are determined by specific historical and cultural circumstances. Since the psychological aspect of the problems of self-image of an individual is mainly outside the scope of this work, the concept of "personality" as having strong psychological and other connotations is used in exceptional cases 55. This does not exclude, in our opinion, the appropriateness of the definition of "personal" as an analogue of the concepts of "subjective", focused on introspection.
Subject and subjectivity. The concept of "subject", which is more familiar to philosophical than to historical research, is used in
23 this work mainly in connection with the rethinking in modern humanities of the concepts of "man", "individual", "personality". It is interpreted as broadly as possible, as containing all of the above 56. “Subjectivity” in this case means, first of all, the “internal component” of a person: his “picture of the world”, his ideas about his own I, his intentions.
Early modern times. In modern historiography, it is customary to single out a separate period of the early modern era as including the most important turning points of European history: the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Great Geographical Discoveries, the emergence of capitalism, the beginning of the secularization of public consciousness, etc. - until the middle of the 18th century or 1789). Since the main sources analyzed in this work refer to the period between the middle. XV century. and the beginning of the 18th century, it may well be designated as a study of the autobiographical writings of the early modern era.
The possibilities of comparative studies. The problem of comparative analysis of autobiographical texts belonging to three cultural traditions is considered in the work, taking into account the recently become obvious theoretical difficulties of comparative studies 57. “Big narratives” in comparative history are today much less convincing than in national or regional history (local, monocultural, etc.). However, the need for comparative studies is still urgent, which necessitates the search for new ways in the field of comparative history 58.
Obviously, in such conditions, the historian must not only be aware of the limited range of topics and questions in which comparative analysis "works", but also the interpretative (ie, mediated, indirect) nature of the answers that appear as a result of this analysis. Moreover, the productivity of comparative analysis often turns out to be directly
24 related to its multidisciplinary nature. “... Comparative studies,” says Donald Kelly, “must be interdisciplinary in approach, and in this respect must surpass the conventional methods of history. The practice and theory of what is called comparative history must include the findings and metahistorical premises of other humanities, including sociology, political science, perhaps philosophy, and especially anthropology; and in search of a reliable ground, it must go beyond the "territory of the historian" ”59. The polydisciplinarity of this work, the use in it, in addition to the actual historical, other approaches to the analysis of the phenomenon of autobiography (narratological, anthropological, gender, etc.) makes it possible to use the comparative-historical method more effectively.
Study structure. The work consists of an introduction, four chapters, a conclusion and an appendix. Its structure is determined by the main task of analyzing various models and ways of self-image of Europeans about themselves and the dynamics of their changes. The construction of the work also proceeds from the need to check the possibility of creating a unified history of the European individual, including a comprehensive explanation of the transformations of the individual I in autobiographical texts of the 15th - 17th centuries. Accordingly, each chapter of it, being a part of the whole, at the same time has an independent meaning, representing an analysis, the contours of which are determined by the understanding of a specific historical situation, a specific author or specific features of an autobiographical text.
The introduction identifies the research topic, formulates its goals and objectives, outlines the problems of source study of personal documents. It also defines the theoretical foundations and source study approaches of the work, criteria for the representativeness of texts in connection with the tasks set, the principles of selection and analysis of sources are developed, and the choice of the analyzed works is substantiated.
25 In the first chapter, "Historiographic and source study contexts of research", the most important theoretical and methodological issues related to the problems of the work are considered. It formulates general grounds for solving the set research problem and defines the methods of text analysis.
Autobiography as a Source on the History of the European Individual
The study of the history of the European individual has always been most directly related to the study of autobiographical writings. And vice versa: the study of the history of European autobiography as a genre and as a historical and cultural phenomenon has always occurred in the perspective of considering the problem of “the individual in history”. With this in mind, let us consider three works on the history of autobiography, in which approaches to this problem have found different expressions: The History of Autobiography by Georg Misch, The Role of the Individual: Personality and Circumstances in Autobiography by Karl Weintraub, and The Origin of the Individualistic Self. Autobiography and Self-Identity in England, 1591-1791 "by Michael Masuch.
"History of autobiography" G. Misha. The famous monumental work of G. Misha128, inspired by Dilthey's understanding of the historical process, for decades determined the main line of comprehension of the phenomenon of autobiography by many cultural historians. Moreover, for decades it remained - and remains today - the main guide to hundreds of autobiographical texts from different peoples and times (from Ancient Egypt to modern Europe).
Autobiography is interpreted in him as an extremely broad phenomenon, in one form or another inherent in any era. The main subject of his research Misch sees, in fact, not an autobiography, but the great process of the liberation of the human personality imprinted in it, which was most fully and vividly manifested in the Western world. Autobiographical writings, therefore, simply turn out to be an expression of the ways in which the sense of the individual personality was developed in this general process. Accordingly, autobiography, no-Misha, is not only a literary genre, but also an original interpretation of the personal experiences of people from different eras. In the preface to the first two volumes of his work, The History of Autobiography in Antiquity, he sees the task of all forthcoming work in “connecting the infinite variety of autobiographical writings with the history of human thought and presenting this diversity in a historical perspective” 130.
Following Dilthey, Misch recognizes the critical importance of autobiographical sources for cultural history, especially for the history of the individual. In his opinion, "an autobiography is the highest and most meaningful form in which we see a person's awareness of his life" 131. In this sense, the history of autobiography is the main documentary evidence of the history of a person's knowledge of himself, which is based on a fundamental - and mysterious - psychological phenomenon that we call self-awareness (Selbstbewusstsein). Growing out of this psychological foundation (according to Misha, it is still subject to some historical changes), a person's disclosure of his own individuality takes on various forms in accordance with a particular era, the personality of the hero and the specific situation in which this hero finds himself. Thus, the autobiography gives us an idea of the changes in the structure of personality from one era to another132.
Building a general picture of changes in the forms of autobiographical essays (and, accordingly, the underlying “structures of individuals”), Misch uses Burkhardt's model of “discovering individuality” 1. However, he connects this “discovery” not only with the Renaissance and his autobiographical writings, but also with the works of post-Homeric antiquity: Hesiod, Archilochus and Solon, Empedocles and Heraclitus. And this is no coincidence. The fact is that, according to Misha, the “discovery of individuality” is not a one-time episode in European history. He believed that, in addition to the Renaissance, something similar was happening in two other earlier cultures: ancient and biblical. “The historical process,” he writes, “which, following Jacob Burckhardt, we describe as the discovery of individuality, can be traced by us at three different stages in the history of European civilization. During the brilliant spring of the free Hellenic spirit that came in the centuries ... that followed the Homeric era ... Around the same period, but within the framework of religious life ... through the spirituality of the prophets of Israel ... And, finally, a new phenomenon took place individuality in the Renaissance ... ".
As for the autobiographical texts themselves, which Misch analyzes, he does not refute the generally accepted opinion that the Renaissance was the “golden age of autobiography,” but emphasizes that it began in Greek culture, and this beginning was then continued in the poetry of the psalms. That is, both the beginning of an autobiography and the beginning of the history of individuality should be sought precisely in archaic Greece ("The beginning for us is the discovery of individuality in post-Homeric Greece" 136).
The main attention, however, is paid by the historian to the European autobiographies of the Middle Ages and partly to the early modern times (Bd. II 68 IV). Analyzing the medieval autobiographical stories created after the great "Confession" of Augustine, he notes the "incompleteness" of the person depicted in them, the presence of clichés in the authors' descriptions of themselves. Radical changes in the direction of individualization of these descriptions, in his opinion, occur only in the Renaissance era, starting with Petrarch. The grandiose work of G. Misha, which had the goal of bringing the research to the 19th century, remained, however, unfinished - its last volumes were published from the surviving drafts after the death of the author.
“The Role of the Individual: Personality and Circumstances in Autobiography” by K. Weintraub. The research of the University of Chicago professor Karl Weintraub, like the work of Misha, proceeds from the fact that the autobiography is the main source for tracing the history of the European individual and his self-consciousness. This work is rightly considered a direct continuation of the humanistic tradition of studying the history of autobiography, which goes back to the concepts of J. Burckhardt and G. Misch. The researcher's general theoretical approach is indeed very close to Burckhardt's (the human individual has always existed, but at one fine moment - in the Renaissance - he openly declared himself, and then as a result of a series of transformations by the beginning of the 19th century he turned into a modern personality). Echoing Burckhardt, Weintraub also states that “he is inclined to recognize the significance of the lifestyle changes that occurred in Italy in the 14th and 15th centuries; they give reason to believe that in many respects this era is closer to modernity than medievalists wish to admit. " He insists that "changing forms of individual self-awareness is a useful indicator of changing cultural configurations." So, for example, "the lack of individuality is a sign of medieval culture, and the emergence of a conscious interest in one's own individuality means the beginning of the New Age." Accordingly, he sees his task of studying autobiographical writings in "tracing the gradual emergence of some of the most important factors" that contributed to the birth of the modern concept of the Self, i.e. a person's belief that "he is a unique individual, whose task in life is to be himself."
The meanings of early autobiography (the legend of St. Alexei, the man of God ")
The question of the boundaries of what is possible for autobiography in Christian culture and the changes in these boundaries inevitably arises in the process of reading stories about oneself dating back to the Middle Ages and early modern times. In the course of writing this work, he constantly arose when analyzing the relationship between autobiographical practice and the medieval Christian ban on public "talking about oneself", the features of the self-image of the humanist Pope Pius II in his "Notes on Memorable Acts", "The Book of Life" by Teresa of Avila and other compositions.
In its most acute form, it is actualized in connection with medieval writings: what happened before, before the famous autobiographies of Petrarch and Cellini? At first glance, finding an answer to this question is not difficult. First, because medieval autobiographical texts are few in number and it only remains to look at them as some more or less unified cultural phenomenon; secondly, because a lot has already been done in this direction by both foreign and Russian researchers - suffice it to recall the works of G. Misha, K. Weintraub, J. Benton, L.M. Batkina, A. Ya. Gurevich 72. It seems that all that remains is to choose the most personally representative autobiographical essays, draw up a general “questionnaire” for them and, accordingly, try to “interrogate” them. In fact, however, it turns out to be not so easy to do. For some reason, the overall picture of the responses received does not add up. Yes, and general questions to the texts are difficult to find. The autobiographical writings left behind by the Western Middle Ages, upon closer examination, look so different that, despite all efforts, they cannot be ordered, grouped, or adjusted to a single measure. Nor is it possible to build a general model based on some of the most striking and expressive works, for example, "The History of My Disasters" by Peter Abelard or "Monody" by Guibert Nozhansky.
However, the most common today general picture of the place of autobiography in European cultural history, outlined by generations of researchers, looks quite integral. According to her, autobiography in one form or another has always been inherent in world culture - too obvious, deeply rooted, at least from the time he learned to write, it seems a person's desire to tell the world about himself, to capture his own human appearance for posterity. Likewise, in the humanities, the idea of the muffled sound of autobiography, as well as of the personal principle in general, in traditional cultures and, conversely, its dominance in the individualistic culture of the West of the New Age, has completely taken root. The Middle Ages, and especially the Renaissance, are seen in this series as some kind of transitional epochs, in which the emergence of New European autobiography, i.e. modern, fully individualistic, in a word, "real".
However, when one has to move from these general considerations to a specific situation, specific texts, serious difficulties arise. The main one, it seems, is that the European Middle Ages and the early Modern Age, leaving us a very specific - at least from a formal point of view - a group of works (the story in them is conducted retrospectively, usually in the first person, its plot is the story of life author), which we now call "autobiographies", told us very little about the "life" of these writings in the respective cultures. Why were they created? Who were they addressed to? How are readers perceived? It is quite obvious that autobiographies and other “ego-documents” are an organic component for the individualistic culture of the New Age. But what were they for medieval culture, which in many ways remained traditional? How to explain that medieval authors created them at all? For some unknown reason, there are practically no explanations on this score in the sources, both from the authors of autobiographies themselves (with rare exceptions) and from their contemporaries. European culture seems to stubbornly ignore the presence of autobiography in it, for some reason refuses to designate it.
The main difficulty, therefore, is the impossibility of discovering the specific historical circumstances of the appearance in it of autobiographical works and their existence, the context that seemed absolutely necessary for the interpretation of their meanings. In other words, something that made it possible to see them not only as a text (i.e. in their relation to other texts - modern, earlier or later), but also as a work, i.e. as part of "extra-textual reality" 73.
However, something in connection with the existence of early autobiography still seems more or less clear. For example, comparatively few “autobiographies” were written in medieval Europe, that they did not attract special attention of readers and for the most part remained in single manuscripts until the 18th century, when interest in such personal stories became obvious74. There are also obvious traces of some kind of dull hostility of medieval Christian orthodoxy to "talking about oneself", which was associated with the sin of pride. That, perhaps, is all.
Of course, it should be borne in mind that the very generalizing view contained in this kind of generalizing approach may raise serious objections. The European culture of the Middle Ages and early modern times is diverse and multidimensional, and therefore it is quite possible to find in it the “simple” desire of a person to capture his image for posterity, without directly correlating this desire with Christian orthodoxy, as, for example, in Fra Salimbene da Parma in his "Chronicle". That is, autobiography could well be a "legitimate" and rather "rooted" part of reality, and traces of this "rootedness" of it, if you look properly, can still be found. In this regard, sometimes they point to one phrase added by a scribe of the beginning of the XIV century. to the so-called "Autobiography" of Pope Celestine V (Pietro del Murrone). This phrase states that the future pontiff "wrote with his own hand" the story of his life and left the manuscript in his cell before going to Rome: "quam ipse propria manu scnpsit et in cella sua reliquid". What is this, if not clear verbal evidence that the idea of an autobiography was quite familiar to people of the Middle Ages?
For a number of reasons, this example, however, does not look representative enough. Firstly, the above phrase could well mean no more than just the scribe's desire to convince readers of the authenticity of the document and the information it communicates. We know quite well that this kind of "argument" is not at all uncommon for medieval t / scriptoria. In addition, there are pretty good reasons to believe that Pietro, this hermit monk who spent most of his life in solitary prayer, did not write in Latin at all - at least, the Bollandists who published his works believed so. Finally - and this is perhaps the most serious reason for doubt - the above formula appears to be one-off. In any case, despite persistent attempts and various search strategies, I could not find any similar to it until the second half of the 16th century. (I mean primarily the works of Cellini and Cardano).
Historiographic and source study problems of studying Western European autobiographical works of the XIV-XVI centuries.
In addition to the general works on early European autobiography, which were mentioned above in Ch. 1, there is a hard-to-see number of studies of individual autobiographical texts of the Western European Middle Ages and early modern times1, as well as studies combining autobiographies on linguistic, national, cultural, religious, social characteristics (Latin, German, Spanish, Italian, Renaissance, merchant, Protestant, Pietist and etc.).
We will limit ourselves, if necessary, to a survey of only some of these works devoted to the texts of the Italian Renaissance (they are largely representative of the general state of affairs). Moreover, in this review we will focus only on those of them that consider autobiographies in the perspective of the problem of the history of the individual that interests us.
What can autobiographical sources give a historian from this point of view? According to Peter Burke, it is a very valuable “view from the inside of culture”, conditioned by the peculiarities of the consciousness of the epoch3. Early autobiographical works, he notes, are always formalized to one degree or another, always filled with commonplaces. However, this circumstance is not their disadvantage or an insurmountable obstacle to the study of their personal content, if we bear in mind that in each particular case the author “played his role - perhaps rather pompously - in accordance with the script that culture provided him with” 4. Making this conclusion, P. Burke has in mind the works of one period, one culture - the Italian autobiographies of the early modern period. However, it is obvious that his thesis may well be applicable to early European autobiography in general. However, it should be noted that the approach proposed by Burke is unlikely to overcome the many different methodological difficulties faced by the researcher of early Western European autobiographical texts. Numerous evidence of this is found in those generalizing works on the Renaissance autobiography, in which its "personal dimension" is considered.
Let us first turn to the fundamental work of G. Misha for an example of these difficulties. The renaissance, after J. Burckhardt, the Göttingen professor5 believed, characterizes a new understanding of man and his place in the world, therefore, it also gives rise to a new function of autobiography - to speak not so much about man's relationship to God as about man as such. This is the main feature of the Renaissance autobiography, which begins with Petrarch and the works that were born in the Polansko-merchant environment (Morelli, Pitti, Welluti, etc.), and ends with Campanella. All Renaissance autobiographies, extremely diverse in their form, are divided into two large groups in terms of content: those that reflect the outside of life (Lebenswirklichkeit), and those in which the author turns his gaze inwardly (reflektierter Selbstdarstellung). The former include, in particular, the works of Piccolomini and Cellini, the latter - by Guicciardini, Lorenzo Medici and Cardano, whose book played a special role in the development of "reflective autobiography", having a noticeable influence on Rousseau and Goethe. However, the analysis of all these works by G. Misch does not differ in originality or depth, he rather develops and illustrates Burckhardt's ideas from the standpoint of Dilthey's understanding of history as a "science of the spirit."
In contrast to Misha's monumental creation, which is rich in concrete material, a small work by the Danish literary historian J. Iisevijn7 consists almost entirely of ready-made - and often unexpected - conclusions and logical inferences about the nature of humanistic autobiography. According to Iiseviin, such an autobiography is, first of all, a poetic work. Its poetic form stems from the well-known aspiration of the humanists to fame (poetry is the shortest path to it). Compositionally, this autobiography is divided into six components - toposes prescribed by the rules of ancient rhetoric: an introduction, a story about the origin of the author (genus), his upbringing and teaching (educatio), deeds (res gestae), his comparison with others (comparatio), epilogue 9. With regard specifically to its content side and its personal beginning, these moments clearly elude the attention of a scientist who is busy looking for the "main signs" of the phenomenon. From his constructions, one can perhaps only conclude that a humanistic autobiography is an auto-apologetic work, completely imbued with the desire of its creator to perpetuate his name and his human appearance.
In support of his judgments, the author gives at the end of the work a very remarkable list of texts. In addition to several well-known Italian autobiographies ("My Secrets" and "Letters to Descendants" by Petrarch, "Notes" by Pius II, "Elegy" by Sannazaro and "On My Life" by Cardano), it includes a wide variety of works of not only Western, but also Eastern European authors, and even those, information about which can be found far from every literary reference book. This makes us think about what content J. Iiseviin puts into the concept of "humanism", and in general on what sources his work is written. Most likely, here you can admit an expansive interpretation of the term. But in this case, why is it that his list does not mention, for example, Cellini's Life, the most famous autobiographical work of the Renaissance, and vice versa, does Christopher Columbus's notes, which, of all modern researchers, it seems, he alone enlists in the category of autobiographies? Unfortunately, there are no answers to this or to many other puzzling questions in the article.
The neglected Danish scholar Benvenuto Cellini's Life is at the center of discussions about the "conventions" of Jonathan Goldberg's Renaissance autobiography10. The pathos of these arguments is largely aimed at identifying the moments that distinguish the Renaissance and, more broadly, the “early autobiography” from the modern one. If the authors of the New Time, Goldberg believes, reveal their own image, referring to their inner life, the Renaissance writers realize themselves through some "typological models." In other words, "while the modern autobiography reveals a single, individual and private self, the early autobiography is a universal, depersonalized and public version of the self." As for Cellini's composition and Renaissance autobiographies in general, the authors portray themselves in them, generally following the idea of holiness set forth in Augustine's Confessions, when a person's own earthly life appears to be life, and any misfortune is a test prepared from above12. It is interesting to note that some of the conclusions of J. Goldberg's article turn out to be surprisingly similar to those that J. Iisevijn comes to, based on almost completely different material. This is especially true of the assertion that the most typical of the Renaissance was a poetic autobiography. According to Goldberg, this is also "the most characteristic form of depicting oneself" - it is no coincidence that Cellini, in his story about the most critical periods of his life, turns to poetry13.
Another Europe: Non-Western Christian Autobiographical Sources and Their Study
The first works devoted to Old Russian autobiography appeared in the late 50s and early 60s. last century. To a large extent, the general formulation of the question of autobiography in Ancient Russia is due to the American Slavic scholar of Russian origin Serge Zenkovsky, who published in 1956 the pioneering article “Monk Epiphanius and the Origin of Ancient Russian Autobiography” 1. Almost simultaneously, the autobiographical works of the Russian schism attracted the attention of A.N. Robinson, who devoted a whole series of studies to the "lives" of Habakkuk and Epiphanius. Since that time, in one way or another, questions about the Old Russian autobiography with varying degrees of completeness and depth began to be raised in the works of V.E. Guseva3, N.S. Demkova4, T.N. Kopreeva, M.B. Plyukhanova, N.V. Ponyrko, A.M. Ranchin and others. Among them, the recent monographic research by E.V. Krushelnitskaya "Autobiography and Life in Old Russian Literature" 9, considering several examples of the XVI-XVII centuries. one of the features of ancient Russian autobiography is its connection with the practice of compiling lives, but also concerning more general issues (we will return to her work more than once later).
Speaking about the history of the study of Old Russian autobiography in general, two rather obvious points can be identified. First, the almost undivided dominance of literary approaches (the only exceptions are, perhaps, the works of Zenkovsky, Plyukhanova and Robinson, since they allow us to look at certain moments of ancient Russian autobiography in a broader historical and cultural context). Secondly, the insufficient study of this literary phenomenon and the discrepancy in the interpretation of the very concept of "ancient Russian autobiography." Back in the 50s-60s. A.N. Robinson said in this regard that “the methodology for studying the problem of autobiography in ancient Russian literature has not yet been determined” and about “the still almost undeveloped problem of studying the ideological and artistic features of ancient Russian autobiography” 11. Over the decades, the situation has hardly changed significantly. E.V. Krushelnitskaya in the book mentioned is forced to state practically the same: "The forms of existence of autobiographical narration in ancient Russian literature remain unexplored, and the problem of autobiography itself is considered mainly in connection with the study of the work of Avvakum and Epiphany."
Extreme positions in relation to the temporal and semantic framework of the concept of "Old Russian autobiography", however, are quite clear. One of them, which for a long time dominated Russian literary criticism, rigidly correlated the emergence of the autobiography genre with Avvakum's Life (and, to a much lesser extent, Epiphanius) 13. All autobiographical works that appeared earlier than the middle of the 17th century are either considered by its supporters exclusively as "predecessors" of the autobiographies of the empty lake martyrs, or they are completely ignored for insignificance (“scientists who are looking for the origins of the empty lake autobiography,” M.B. Plyukhanova believes, “can only find a few less expressive cases of first-person narration ”). V.E. is even more categorical. Gusev, who believed that in ancient Russian literature "the existence of autobiography itself as an independent literary genre is doubtful." As for the recognized masterpiece of ancient Russian autobiography, "Life" of Avvakum, it, according to the scientist, "is not so much associated with the traditional genres of ancient Russian writing, as it portends the emergence of more developed forms of new Russian literature."
The opposite position was indicated even earlier by S. Zenkovsky, who proceeded from an expansive interpretation of autobiography as a genre. This scientist was the first to declare the presence of an autobiographical tradition in ancient Russian literature almost from the very beginning of its existence. He argued that "the Russian autobiography developed slowly but continuously ... The first autobiographical motives appeared in the tradition corresponding to hagiographic literature, simultaneously with ... The teachings of Vladimir Monomakh, the first secular work with autobiographical elements." In his opinion, “in the late Moscow period, the autobiographical genre already had strong roots” 17 and therefore the recognized masterpiece of Avvakum should not be regarded as an epoch-making event. While not challenging the innovation of the autobiography of the “rebellious archpriest” as a whole, Zenkovsky nevertheless emphasizes that “numerous earlier examples of this genre were known in Moscow Russia. Both early Christian literature and Russian secular writings of the pre-Petrine period provided many models for writing an autobiography ”19. And although the attempt of an American Slavist to build an autobiographical tradition of Old Russian literature subsequently aroused in many respects fair criticism, primarily because the researcher's acquaintance with the texts was clearly insufficient for such bold generalizations, his merit in posing the general problem is hardly in doubt.
The desire to comprehend the phenomenon of ancient Russian autobiography (mainly in connection with the search for its origins) gave rise to a whole series of works devoted to determining its place in the system of genres of ancient Russian literature. According to S. Zenkovsky, "it arose from two fundamental elements: on the one hand, from the will and monastery charter, on the other hand, from autobiographical stories about life." N.V. Ponyrko correlates ancient Russian autobiography with the tradition of spiritual wills. The largest researcher of the Pustozero autobiographical cycle A.N. Robinson sees it as a modification and development of the hagiographic tradition and talks about the elements of autobiographical narration in hagiographic texts23. Sometimes they also talk about the autobiographical nature of teachings, prefaces to books, notes of noblemen of the 16th-15th centuries. about their service and family24, etc.
In the latest research, the question of the content of the concept of "Old Russian autobiography" loses its one-dimensionality. Researchers draw a distinction in them between autobiography (the authors' stories about themselves, existing within the framework of different literary genres) and autobiography proper and come to the conclusion that they do not coincide. Thus, T.N. We read by Kopreeva that "autobiography very early finds its place in the system of written genres of ancient Russia ...", however, "the presence of autobiographical materials scattered in works of different genres does not turn them into autobiography." In the already named study by E.V. Krushelnytska tradition of auto / biographical narration in the monastic environment, the picture is also ambiguous. The author is inclined to a compromise solution to the question of the birth of the genre of autobiography (in her opinion, it begins with the "lives" of Avvakum and Epiphanius): although there are no direct analogs to these works in previous literature, the autobiographical tradition still existed in ancient Russian literature and created "important common reasons "for the appearance of both.
STRATEGIES AND SCENARIOS OR WHAT THE MIRROR SHOWS (Instead of a review)
Zaretsky Yu.P. STRATEGIES FOR UNDERSTANDING THE PAST. THEORY, HISTORY, HISTORIOGRAPHY.
Moscow: New Literary Review, 2011
My life, or I dreamed about you.
S. Yesenin
An interesting book invites reflection, which is the subject of the following text. In part, this reflection responds to the questions posed in it, in part echoes with them, sometimes deviates aside, but in general, more or less truthfully reflects the picture drawn in the monograph by Yu.P. Zaretsky, and in some ways its structure.
1. Abstracts. History is such a science. Or not science, or not really science. In any case, there are many people (an imaginary community) who call themselves "historians" 1: either they are scientists, or storytellers, or generally lovers of the past who are engaged in its reproduction. History in the sense of recording events did not always exist, historians usually begin the history of history with Herodotus, who understood by the word "history", as is also usually considered, the investigation of news. Until the 19th century. history was not considered a science, but since Leopold von Ranke proclaimed that it was necessary to describe "how it really was", history became a science, and historians even imagined that there were some laws of social development, with references to which they began to frame their works.
However, at times, historians began to notice that the open laws are very different from what various facts say, and their interpretation depends entirely on what is happening in the minds of the writers and readers of history. Sometimes the point of view of supporters of the laws and objectivity of the realities of the past prevailed or more impressed the spirit of the times, sometimes it was disgusting to this spirit, and such a pendulum alternation of trends in scientific minds continues to this day. However, this discrepancy is more typical of Western historians, in our own God-protected fatherland it was not allowed to deviate from the laws for many years, and almost the only outlet in this kingdom of unfreedom was the occasional opportunity to secretly wipe fat fingers on the portrait of the leader woven on the banner. ...
1 English historian, fr. historien, it. Historiker from Historik (history), or Geschichtsschreiber from Geschichte (also history), Italian. storico, isp. historiador.
2 Yu.P. Zaretsky describes this "practice" in p. 123 of his book, in the note. 38: “The possible forms of latent protest ... could be surprisingly creative. One of my fellow practitioners. After eating donuts at the big break, he strove to go into the pioneer room and wipe his hands on the school banner with the image of the Leader. Of course, when there were no "unnecessary eyes" around. "
This is, in a very brief, and, of course, a very simplified presentation3, the content of the monograph by our fellow in the workshop (medievalist) Yuri Petrovich Zaretsky, a professor at a leading university in our country, who summarized in it, in the form of a collection of essays, his many years of research in the field of the historical study of individuality , subjectivity and modern historiography on these topics.
2. Wait and catch up. One of the main thoughts of the book by Yu.P. Zaretsky lies in the fact that Russian (Russian? - see Chapter 14 on the nuances of understanding ethnicity4) science has lagged far behind Western science, i.e., as regularly happened in Russian history, we, in particular humanitarians, should again, having cleansed ourselves of the former filth, "catch up with America." The trouble is that the damned foreigners do not even think of dwelling on something definite, but invent all new types of history and "new historical science" Our cathedral modernism will not have time to undergo the corrupting influence of postmodernism, as in the West, you see, it already claims its rights post-postmodernism. What will happen next, and where should the historian go? Something suspiciously many schools and systems have been created over the past decades, almost each has its own school. Isn't it better not to deviate far from the "traditional" historiography and wait until its solidity or consistency is once again recognized at the next stage? In addition, modest, but his own, not necessarily worse than good, but someone else's. Modern society in its economic and cultural foundations is built on the idea of constant renewal, but renewal as an end in itself is meaningless.
Innovations in the humanities of the XX-XX1 centuries. indeed, to a great extent they were connected with the problem of the individual in his relation to himself and the environment, including to history, about which Yu.P. Zaretsky. In his book, the reader can see a kind of compendium of most of the newest, or "fashionable" (as the author himself puts it, using quotation marks), ways of writing and history writing. Yu.P. Zaretsky managed to arrange their characteristics in a sequential series, accompanied by stories about his own searches, so the book itself turned out to be not devoid of autobiography. Its pathos, which is that a scientist always expresses only one of the possible opinions and that one can move to the truth in different ways, is unlikely to provoke heated discussions. Name only:
3 I do not consider this presentation to be caricatured. Some detachment of the "discourse" of the previous and some subsequent paragraphs is connected precisely with one of the strategies of approaching the answer to the sacramental question, rightly asked by the author of the book: "Why write THIS?"
4 In particular, see p. 90, 342. From the point of view of the theory of ethnic constructivism, the adjectives “Russian” and “Russian” seem to be almost synonymous, at least in relation to science. It is curious that, as a rule, the same word is used to translate them into other languages.
“Strategies for understanding history” is already very loud. It reminds either of “battles for history”, or of the movements of regiments, again, of banners, etc. But does the historian need a strategy? And moreover, what is this “understanding of history” - is it the study of alternatives (what would have happened if) or the establishment of cause-and-effect relationships (it should have happened because), or a statement of the non-binding nature of any interpretations and the inconclusiveness of any conclusions? Wouldn't it be more correct to simply describe “as it was”, even in the terminology of modern “discourses,” but without going into the theoretical jungle - most of the so-called practicing historians act in exactly this way. Experience seems to indicate that all attempts to modernize the science of history fall apart on the mighty strongholds of narrative and positivism, and this is understandable, since history is inherently conservative. Declarations about the fragility of historical matter and the artistry of historical synthesis are balanced by a persistent (as a real scientist would say) desire to calculate and present everything in the form of graphs and tables.
3. A belated hymn to subjectivity. Be that as it may, introspection and reflection are becoming integral companions of today's science: both the linguistic turn, and the history of concepts, and the “historicization” (or historicization5) of familiar phenomena follow from the coming awareness of the dependence of acquired truths on the tools of their acquisition, from the idea of a person and knowledge as about processes, and not about things.
The paradox of being, and, consequently, of history, whose task is to grasp6 the changing being, lies in the fluidity of time. The justification of history is precisely the very phenomenon of subjective individuality; you can even substitute other words - the phenomenon of life. The very phenomenon of the living generates the need to fix the passing time, since life consists in the awareness of value in general, and in particular of value, as something that should be preserved, resist fluidity and eternity (or be measured against eternity). This is the phenomenon of subjectivity, individual and collective "I".
The subjectivity of a living cell and a person talking about history are not exactly the same thing. It is assumed that between unicellular organisms and modern man lie thousands and millions of years of evolutionary change, the pace of which today is greatly accelerated. The flowering of subjective human individuality falls on the last centuries (its earlier landmarks are the Greco-Roman culture,
5 One of the most frequently used by Yu.P. Zaretsky of concepts, for illustration or discussion of which he quotes three times Foucault's words that “things that seem to us the most obvious always arise in the course of an unpredictable and transient history” (pp. 61, 129-130, 199).
6 You can say and master, but the word “appropriate”, sometimes used by the author of the book, seems to me an exaggeration. However, it all depends on the context.
14. Middle Ages. Issue 73 (1-2)
then the European Renaissance of the XIU-XU centuries), until then collective individuality dominated, and the behavior of subjects was largely determined by external, slowly changing parameters - this is, according to the book by Yu.P. Zaretsky7, a view still widespread today.
But has the expansion of the needs of human individuality led to "progress" at least in its development, has today's society become more harmonious, have the contradictions between collective and selfish interests, on which morality and history have been built, have been resolved? Caring for the individual, respect for her, the desire to preserve and cultivate their own and someone else's unique individuality have reached today, at least in theory, unprecedented heights. But how absurd forms this, if you will, modern paradigm takes in the form of a desire at any cost to stand out from the crowd or to succeed in acquiring miserable values, replicated with the help of equally miserable cliches by the media! Does something similar happen to science (its absolute value is exposed in the book of Yu.P. Zaretsky to debunking (pp. 52-57) 8, and in particular, with the search for a special personal or individual principle in each text, "another", etc. .NS.?
An academic periodical on the history of the Middle Ages and early modern times in Western Europe, which is the organ of the professional community of Russian medievalists. Founded in 1942 under the stamp of the USSR Academy of Sciences, it is published in the form of a yearbook (Nauka Publishing House) without interruptions up to the present time. Published quarterly since 2007.
It is included in the list of peer-reviewed publications recommended by the Higher Attestation Commission for the defense of kadidat and doctoral dissertations. Currently, the journal publishes original studies by domestic and foreign historians, devoted mainly to Western European history of the Middle Ages and early modern times, as well as articles related to adjacent regions or related disciplines.
Much attention is paid to translations of sources, historiographic reviews, acquaintance with the life of the main scientific centers of Russian medieval studies. Materials are regularly posted to help teachers of higher and secondary schools, reviews of domestic and foreign publications, bibliography of works published in Russia on the history of Western Europe in the mid-4th-mid-17th centuries.
NEWS
ANNOUNCEMENT
Issue 78 (1-2)
Uvarov P.Yu.
From the editor
COATS AND EMBLEMS
A.P. Black
Punishment and desecration of the coat of arms in the Middle Ages
D.S. Ryzhova
About the language of the 13th century English heralds
CULTURAL AND HISTORICAL LANDSCAPES OF FRANCE
Yu.N. Kanyashin (Almaty, Kazakhstan)
Field names as a source for the agrarian and social history of Pagus Matisconensis in the early Middle Ages
I.S. Filippov
Locally Revered French Saints of the 11th Century and the Problem of Canonization in a European Context
MEDIEVAL LAW: TEXTS AND USUALS
D.P. Safronova
Liber Iudiciorum in Leone documents of the X-XI centuries
M.V. Vinokurova
Saysin in Small Towns Customary Law of Medieval England
MANUAL BOOK, PRINTED BOOK
M.A. Kurysheva
Library of Greek manuscripts Ṣā‛id ibn Daniel ibn Bishra XII century
G.I. Borisov
1557 edition of the leges barbarorum by Henrik Petrie
ARISTOTELISM AND HUMANISM
B.I. Klyuchko (St. Petersburg)
Anthropology of Marsil of Padua
P.A. Ryazanov (Nizhny Novgorod)
Greek studies and Milanese humanism of the 15th - first quarter of the 16th century
ADJACENT DISCIPLINES, NEIGHBORING REGIONS: HISTORY OF MEDICINE: PRACTICE AND THEORY
HER. Berger, S.P. Glyantsev
"I bandaged him, and the Lord healed him ..." (Ambroise Paré and the healing of wounds in the 16th century)
W. Black (Worcester (Massachusetts), USA)
Medieval Confession as Healing (translated from English by E.E.Berger)
Yu.V. Ivanova
Mendosa methodica: Prospero Alpini on Egyptian medicine
W. Nutton (London, UK)
"The Year of the Great Turning Point": Vesalius in 1538 (translated from English by EE Berger)
CORRIGENDA
A.Yu. Vinogradov, M.I. Korobov
Gothic graffiti from Mangup Basilica
FROM THE HISTORY OF DOMESTIC MEDIA
L.V. Landina (Minsk, Belarus)
The concept of absolutism in Soviet historiography of the 1920s and 1930s: continuity or discreteness?
"THE FINGER'S FINGERS MUST BE MOLDED IN INK": ECHO OF AN ECONOMIC HISTORY
M.A. Alexandrova
Round table "The price of information in Europe before modern times"
M.A. Ryabova
Medieval Studies at the XIV World Accounting Congress
CHRONICLES
V.V. Shishkin (St. Petersburg)
Meeting of the Department of Manuscripts of the Russian National Library (St. Petersburg): Pyotr Petrovich Dubrovsky (1754-1816) - the first curator of the Manuscript Depot
Favorites in Runet
Yuri Zaretsky
Zaretsky Yuri Petrovich - Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor, Associate Professor of the Department of History of Philosophy, State University of the Higher School of Economics.
This article will discuss the three concepts included in its title: history, memory, national identity. More precisely, about the changes in the meanings of these concepts in recent decades and about the various connections between these meanings. "Rewriting of history" to one degree or another is observed not only in the post-Soviet space, but also in quite "prosperous" countries.
This article will discuss the three concepts included in its title: history, memory, national identity. More precisely, about the changes in the meanings of these concepts in recent decades and about the various connections between these meanings. Its goal - quite reckless - is to try to outline briefly some general framework for the possible comprehension of national histories in today's social and humanitarian knowledge.
Let's start with stories... If originally this ancient Greek word meant "presentation of research results", today it is most often used in three meanings. The first one is past, that is, one of the constituent elements of the triad fixed in European languages and European consciousness: past-present-future, with the help of which people structure time ... Second - story about some event or events. Finally, the third and most important value is science that studies the past.
It should be noted here that not only in everyday consciousness, but also in scientific consciousness, these three meanings are often confused ... For example, the expression "to know history" most often simultaneously implies both knowledge of what took place in the past and acquaintance with the works of historians. At the same time, attention is not paid to at least three important circumstances: first, that the images of the past created by historians have changed dramatically over the centuries; second, that at different times different groups of historians turned to different sides of this past (hence the different directions in historiography: political history, social history, economic history, history of ideas, history of mentalities, and so on); finally, thirdly, that modern historians, just like their predecessors, it is difficult to find anything similar to a community of views on the past .
The first meaning of the word is history - that is, history as past - the most obvious and hardly requires any special comment. Few would argue that, in the minds of today's European, these are events located on the time axis that have already occurred, that is, something that was once, which is not now and which will never be again.
Second meaning (history as story), on the contrary, needs some explanation. It has long been taken for granted that our scientific knowledge of the past exists as a coherent narrative. But since the 1970s, this evidence has become the subject of close attention of scholars who "discovered" that language and text are intermediaries between the past and the historian who studies it. First, it became obvious that the past becomes available to the historian mainly due to the preserved stories about him, left by his contemporaries; secondly, that the results of research by historians also represent stories... That is, it turned out that our scientific knowledge of the past is predominantly a description of sequences of events (narratives), compiled on the basis of other descriptions.
The point, however, is that, according to philosophers and linguists (from Wittgenstein to Derrida), no language construct is a neutral transmitter of meanings: it always obeys certain laws and carries certain cultural "matrices" of meanings. Any use of language, therefore, inevitably obeys these predetermined meanings. The foregoing is considered especially true in relation to expanded narratives, in particular, historical ones. So, Hayden White, having analyzed the texts created by the largest historians of the nineteenth century - Michelet, Ranke, Tocqueville, Burchardt, Marx and others - identified four "archetypes" underlying their constructions: novel, comedy, tragedy and satire. According to White, any historian is involuntarily faced with the choice of one of these four modes of storytelling, and he makes his choice not out of striving to comprehend historical truth (although he may sincerely believe in what he shows “as it really was”), but morally or aesthetic ... As a result, the role traditionally attributed to historians as producers of objective scientific knowledge about the past, as well as the very possibility of comprehending the past, were called into question. Statements began to be heard more and more often that today - as it was before the formation in the 19th century historischeWissenschaft- history should be attributed not to the field of scientific knowledge, but to fine literature .
First of all, it can be noted that today the understanding of "historical science" (it is now usually denoted less ambitiously - "historical knowledge") is increasingly detached from its two main postulates that emerged in the 18th century. First: that history studies the process of human development, which has a common logic and direction. Second: that this process lends itself to objective (= scientific) knowledge ... At the same time, the idea of the social conditioning of historical knowledge acquires special significance.
We are not talking about a banal formula for the influence of public interests, state policy, the personality of the historian and the like on historical science - this kind of influence has always been recognized in one way or another. This means that the very image of the past, as such, in historiography cannot be "objective" in principle. He is either his "reconstruction" (at best), or in general a "construction" that has little to do with the "true" past. At the same time, it is recognized that in both cases this image, firstly, directly depends on power relations in society and, secondly, is the subject of manipulation by forces aimed at achieving certain political results in the present. The growing recognition of this kind of conditionality of historical knowledge can be judged by the intrusion of relevant topics into the agenda of the largest international forums of historians. One of the main themes of the 19th Congress of Historical Sciences in Oslo (2000), for example, was formulated as follows: "The use of history, its abuse and the responsibility of historians" ... This formulation implies not only that the products produced by historians are not “pure” knowledge, but knowledge dependent on specific social and political circumstances. She means that this knowledge is inevitably “used” in one way or another by the power forces, and often to the detriment of society, which leads to such sad consequences as wars, genocide, interethnic conflicts, and so on. The most frequently cited example of such use is the role of 19th century scholars in shaping the ideology and practice of nationalism. Having "scientifically substantiated" the three most important characteristics of a nation: the unity of language, territory and culture going back to the distant past, they created a historical "mixture" of enormous destructive power, which was used more than once throughout the 20th century (here it is enough to mention two world wars) and continues to be used in different parts of Europe today (the most famous example today is the events in and around Kosovo).
An important characteristic feature of modern historical knowledge is also the historicization (and at the same time problematization) of a number of familiar concepts. This historicalizing / problematizing trend in historiography has generated in the last twenty to thirty years a large series of studies devoted to a variety of topics. As an example, we can cite the popular monograph of the famous American historian Patrick Geary "The Myth of Nations: The Medieval Origins of Europe" ... The main idea of the author (he proves it right on the example of the formation of the idea of "nation" in European science of the XIX century) is that the views of millions of modern Europeans, proud of their descent from the Celts, Franks, Gauls, Huns, Serbs and so on, are based on illusions. Accordingly, the task of his research is to show how these illusions arose, that is, to “deconstruct” the myth about the ontological nature of the nation and the idea of it as an eternal and unchanging reality. Another typical example is the recently translated into Russian study by Larry Wolfe "Inventing Eastern Europe" ... It shows, using numerous examples, that there is nothing “natural” in the division of the European continent into Western and Eastern Europe, which is familiar to us: until the 18th century, such a division simply did not exist. The concept of a separate, "backward" Europe appeared only in the era of the Enlightenment, when its figures from the heights of their knowledge began to condescendingly curiously survey the world around them. Finally, the research of the German historian Fridtjof Benjamin Schenk, which has just appeared in the Russian language, devoted to the functioning of the cultural memory of Alexander Nevsky, belongs to the same historicalizing and problematizing direction. ... The main question posed by the author (it should be noted, for our historiography sounds rather unusual) is not what his hero was "in reality", but "how the image of Alexander Nevsky changed during the period of more than seven hundred years of his history" .
The famous French philosopher Paul Ricoeur (1913-2005), speaking in one of his last lectures about the general shifts in historical knowledge of the XX century, defined them with a capacious formula: “the history of events was replaced by the history of interpretations”. Of course, this formula claimed not so much for completeness as for the designation of a general trend.
The second concept that will be discussed is memory(more precisely, social memory) is closely intertwined with the concept of "history". His introduction into scientific circulation and the beginning of the study of social memory dates back to the 1920s and is associated with the name of Maurice Halbwachs ... For Halbwachs, memory is a social construct created in the present. That is, it is understood not as a sum of memories of individuals, but as a kind of collective cultural work that develops under the influence of family, religion and social group through linguistic structures, everyday life practices and social institutions. That is, it "constitutes a system of social conventions within which we give shape to our memories." .
Halbwachs's work, which proved to be especially in demand in the last decades of the 20th century, laid the foundation for a new interdisciplinary direction of research ... Social memory, its formation, as well as the relationship between social memory and historical knowledge have become the topic of extensive scientific and public discussions. In these discussions, one important difference in the positions of the participants should be highlighted. If for Halbwachs and some of his followers, social memory and historical science act as antagonists (historical science begins where collective memory ends and vice versa), then the new generation of scientists is inclined to converge these concepts. As one of them notes, “when the dichotomy of collective memory and history is postulated, they overlook the social and cultural context in which the historian himself is located” and attribute to historical knowledge the objectivity and ahistoricity that it hardly deserves.
“Historians work for some purpose - essentially to form the collective memory of the historical workshop and, ultimately, of the society in which they live. Research seeks to transform the collective understanding of the past. " .
Be that as it may, but since the 1980s, historians began to actively study collective memory. One of the most famous and large-scale works in this direction was the project under the direction of Pierre Nora "Places of Memory" ... It focuses on places, things and events, which together constitute the material from which collective memory is constructed in France. These "symbolic objects" are individual localities, monuments, events, rituals, symbols and traditions that make up the diversity of French national identity: the Pantheon, Jeanne d'Arc, Arc de Triomphe, Larousse dictionary, Wall of the Communards and dozens of others. "The way in which fragments of the past made up of these debris have come down to us," says Nora, "the way in which they appeared, disappeared, split into pieces and reused, is what created us." ... Thus, the main task of the study, which brought together the largest historians of France, was to find answers to questions that are topical for today's French society: What is France? What does it mean to be French? How have ideas about France and the French changed over time?
Finally, the third concept, national identity, the most vague and contradictory due to its much greater rootedness in the socio-political vocabulary than in the scientific one.
Identity in this case, it is understood as social identity, that is, a person's belonging to one or another stable group of people. This belonging is usually considered a fact if it is recognized, on the one hand, by the person himself, on the other, by the people around him or by society as a whole. Long explanations, however, are hardly required here.
National- another case, since this word is loaded with various meanings. Two of them are the most obvious: the original meaning of the concept of "nation" can be understood, firstly, as a society and a state and, secondly, as a particular people (ethnos). In Western European languages today, of course, the first meaning dominates, in modern Russia - the second. .
The peculiarities of today's Russian understanding of national identity are due to very specific historical circumstances. The well-known concepts of "nation" and "nationality" entered our political, scientific and everyday lexicon largely thanks to the Russian Social Democrats, who, as you know, were quite familiar with Western social science (mainly German) of the late XIX - early XX century. Of fundamental importance for the introduction of these concepts into everyday life was the famous article "Marxism and the National Question", which, after the victory of the Bolshevik revolution, turned not only into the "alphabet" of nation-building, but also into the most important tool for rooting new concepts in the Russian language. .
As for the concept of "nationality", it began to gradually acquire more and more importance since 1926, after it was included in the questionnaire of the All-Union Population Census ... Then (for the first time in our history!) Every citizen of the USSR not only heard this word from the "lips" of the new authorities, but was obliged to identify himself with one or another nationality / ethnic group. As a result, the state power received a picture of the "national composition of the population of the USSR" necessary for the development of its "national policy".
The introduction in 1932 in the USSR of the passport system with the corresponding column finally formed and "cemented" the Soviet understanding of "nationality" for decades. Although not immediately. Initially, each citizen of the USSR, when receiving a passport, was free to indicate in the column "nationality" the one to which he attributed himself, regardless of his place of birth, origin, religion, native language and other factors. However, very soon, apparently already from the end of the 1930s, in the USSR “nationality” began to be understood almost exclusively as blood kinship. No personal freedom in defining one's own identity was allowed, knowledge of language, customs, and the like faded into the background, and it was blood kinship that became the most important sign of belonging to one or another "nationality" - in any case, it was indications of such kinship required various instructions, questionnaires and daily practices. In general, it is quite possible to agree with the conclusion made by historians: in the USSR "personal nationality has become exclusively a matter of blood." .
In the post-Soviet period, such a picture of "national communities" and the criteria for their designation were sharply criticized by Russian scientists, and instead of the concepts of "nation" and "nationality", the concepts of "ethnos", "ethnic group " other ... However, the difficulties in mastering the new conceptual apparatus and its use turned out to be more serious than scientists expected: in the state-political and general public practice, the designation of ethnic groups and the understanding of their nature did not undergo major changes in the post-Soviet period. Here is what Valery Tishkov wrote in this regard:
“What is even the first line of the current Constitution:“ We, the multinational people of the Russian Federation ”. These old clichés of “multinationality” from the Soviet declarations, when there was no need to pay for them with the implementation procedure, migrated into a completely new political situation of more responsible meanings. " .
Recently, however, Russian citizens are increasingly confronted with a different interpretation of their "national identity": as citizenship and, accordingly, the understanding of the "nation" as Russian society and the state as a whole. For example, when they fill out a visa application when traveling abroad, or hear in the media about Russian "national interests", the national project "affordable housing" and so on.
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In conclusion, it should be emphasized: the search for a new collective identity today is relevant not only for Russia. The rapidly changing world urges the formation of new national (and often supranational) identities, requiring the transformation of existing forms of collective memory. From Russia, such transformations are especially noticeable in the countries of the former USSR, which are usually painfully perceived in our country and labeled as “rewriting history” (especially in Ukraine and the Baltic states). But the "rewriting of history" to one degree or another is observed not only in the post-Soviet space, but also in quite "prosperous" countries. Nora's project mentioned above proceeded from the very concrete practical task of constructing a new French identity. "We are moving from one model of the nation to another" , Nora emphasized, in an article eloquently entitled "How to write the history of France?" and without false modesty he added that his project is "a response to the imperative requirements of the moment, the only one that corresponds today to the state of science and consciousness." .
Surprising as it may seem, but the task of acquiring a new collective identity is highly relevant today not only for “Russians”, but also for the British, Germans, and Americans. ... Especially for governments, public and scientific institutions of the EU countries. The number of scientific publications, conferences and research projects (as a rule, international and interdisciplinary), in which the idea of “forming” or “creating” a new European identity is present in one way or another, is innumerable today. They are about European political and economic integration, the disappearance of state borders, migration processes and, last but not least, the need for a new supranational history, corresponding to the task of building a united Europe .
Today it is difficult to imagine what the concrete results of these large-scale projects will be. Moreover, it is not entirely clear to what extent the expert opinions of political historians are listened to, and whether they listen at all. Most likely, historical knowledge is more used by them to achieve certain immediate results than it plays some kind of independent role. But it hardly follows from this that historians are so useless for rebuilding modern society. They can, at least obstinately, tell their readers with annoying details and repetitions about how phantoms of the past are created, how they were used to achieve specific political goals in the past, and how they are used now.
Notes:
It can be added that, in addition to some social and cultural circumstances, such a common confusion of "past" and "history" is due to the Russian language (in German, for example, "past" and "historical knowledge" usually differ, and for such a distinction there is respectively words Geschichte and Historie). The Russian language, however, in this case is more the rule than the exception - in English and French history and histoire also used in both senses.
What has been said is true both in relation to some of its separate episodes (for example, the October Revolution / Bolshevik coup / revolution of 1917 in Russia), and in relation to the past of mankind as a whole - in recent years, doubts have been increasingly expressed about the very possibility of creating a single world history.
White H. Metahistory: Historical Imagination in 19th Century Europe. Yekaterinburg, 2002.
It is noteworthy that the great German historian of Ancient Rome Theodor Mommsen in 1902 could still receive the Nobel Prize for literature. How to write the history of France? // France is a memory. S. 92-93.
Let me give you an example for illustration - a case recently told to me. It took place in early October 2006 at a German university at the first meeting of newly admitted first-year students, some of whom were foreigners. Each person present had to introduce themselves briefly, that is, give their name and add a few words about themselves. Everything went on routinely until one girl got up and said: “I (such and such). I am from Kazakhstan, but I am Russian "( Ich komme aus Kasakhstan, aber ich bin Russin). Immediately, bewilderment arose, and those present began to whisper, trying to find out what these mysterious words mean: what nationality is she after all (that is, a citizen of which state is she)? Kazakhstan (= Kazakh)? Or is it Russia (= Russian)? Or maybe she has dual citizenship? Any special status? The meaning of what was said was perfectly understood only by one student from Russia, who was in the audience and told me this remarkable story.
Cm.: SPb., 1999; and in particular, the article: V.Yu. Sukhachev. National identity - theory and reality// Ibid. S. 30-37.
The census program included 14 items. In addition to “nationality” (in the census form its synonym was “nationality”), these signs included: gender, age, native language, place of birth, length of residence at the census place, marital status, literacy, physical disabilities, mental health, occupation ( with the allocation of the main and secondary), the position in employment and the branch of labor, for the unemployed - the duration of unemployment and the previous occupation, a source of livelihood (for those who do not have an occupation).
All-Union Population Census of 1926. Ethnic composition of the population in the republics of the USSR// Demoscope.ru (http://demoscope.ru/weekly/ssp/ussr_nac_26.php).
Features of the constitution of national and ethnic identity in modern Russia. P. 367. To what has been said, it is necessary to add that in the official Soviet ideology any manifestation of nationalism and racism was categorically condemned.
It should be noted that before perestroika, the concept of "ethnos" was not in use. See: G.V. Lyubimova Study of the problems of ethnic self-identification in Russian literature of the 1990s(www.sati.archaeology.nsc.ru/Home/pub/Data/arj/?html=lubg.htm&id=1304).
Tishkov V.A. Forget about the nation (Post-nationalist understanding of nationalism)// Questions of philosophy. 1998. No. 9 (cited from: www.portal.rsu.ru/culture/rostov.doc).
Nora P. How to write the history of France? S. 89-90.
In the same place. P. 93. It should be added that Nora's bold and large-scale enterprise later became a model for research on the emergence and reorganization of national identities through images of memory of the past, conducted in a number of European countries.
In the United States, for example, after the collapse of the idea of American society as a "melting pot" and the rapid growth of the flow of immigrants from Latin America, conservative scholars sounded the alarm, who saw the main threat to American identity in the flow of Latinos immigrants and called for the restoration of the Anglo-Protestant foundation of this identity (see: Huntington S.P. WhoAreWe? The Challenges to America's National Identity. NewYork, 2004).
As examples of the participation of historians in the creation of a European collective memory, I will point to the series of popular monographs "Build Europe" ("Faire l'Europe") by the largest scientists of our time (since 1993 it has been published under the editorship of Jacques Le Goff and translated into the main European languages) and a large-scale project CLIOH, which has the task of teaching and studying European history at all levels, based on a supranational vision of the European past (see:
