About a month ago I submitted a thread asking, "Am I a bad historian if my personal interests align with the great man theory?" This engendered a really great discussion about the accuracy of various modes of historiography, and made me question many convictions I had previously held about the field of history and my interest in it. In this thread, I tried to verbalize my personal conflict with history by explaining that my personal tastes tended to hover toward more methodologically conservative works of literature, but I realize now that this isn't fully correct. I don't exactly prefer studying about "great people"; I prefer studying a narrative. I tend to think of history as "things that happen", and am most interested in learning history this way. I recognize the incredible importance of anthropological social history, and find it to be oftentimes very fascinating, but I prefer to learn what happened, not what was. Quite a long time ago, I insisted on another forum that "history is about studying changes to the status quo". While I'm now very aware that this is an immature and ignorant view of history, I'm still most interested in individual events, people, or movements that changed society. More broadly, I want to understand the narrative.

Much of my opening post dealt with a recent course by Guido Ruggiero, a rather illustrious Renaissance historian who recently published (and taught) a lengthy overview of the Renaissance and Italy, which I found incredibly enlightening but also very disappointing. While I took the class mostly hoping to learn what happened in the Renaissance, the textbook was primarily a work of "social and cultural history". This meant that the course was almost entirely non-chronological, and was in many ways an ethnography of 14th-16th century Florentines. Every chapter was centered around a lofty concept like "Self", "Discovery", or "Violence" and how they ideals of the Rinascimento (the terminology that Professor Ruggiero preferred). This book covered a very wide range of topics, from attitudes toward premarital sex to the baronial organization of Rome, but never delved into the events that specifically piqued my interest.

As I mentioned in the last thread, there was very little attention given to the motivations or effects of any individual or event. The late-fifteenth century French invasion of Italy, which I might consider to be possibly the most important single event of the Italian Renaissance, was not covered. We never learned why the war was fought or how it ran its course, and Dr. Ruggiero didn't mention its implications on the politics of Italy. Instead, we learned how it reduced efficacy in the strength of the Italian states and promoted resentment against the French and the Church. Similarly, the rapid and mind-numbingly massive conquests of Gian Galeazzo Visconti were not described. Despite its 650 pages, the textbook only mentioned the Count of Milan in reference to his "virtu" and how he was idolized by certain Italian intellectuals for his shrewdness. Personally, I would be thrilled to read an account of Gian Galeazzo's campaigns and how they transformed the governments and erased the borders of Northern Italy. It may not be as consequential to the scope of European history in the long-term, but learning about the specifics of these wars is far more interesting to me than studying Boccaccio's views on sexual morality and whether or not they represented popular opinion (a topic that Dr. Ruggiero was especially fond of).

Could there be a "narrative history" that contrasts with mainstream social history? Do there exist any noteworthy recent works that cover events as they happened? It seems that nearly all pre-modern works of history follow the mold I prefer, and because about 90% of the historical literature I've been assigned has been a primary source, that might explain my tastes. In an earlier semester I read the Diary of Margaery Kemp and The Murder, Betrayal, and Slaughter of Charles, Count of Flanders, two very different but equally engrossing medieval texts that described in very real terms the Middle Ages as experienced by its people. Another book assigned that semester, concerning the "True Levellers" of early modern England, was much more of a drag. Although it was written centuries later, it was less engrossing due to its non-narrative structure, as it carried an assumption that a student could understand the English Civil War without needing to know the events as they occurred. With some slight reservation I'll concede that I'm a pretty big fan of certain Dan Carlin podcasts. I take his material with a grain of salt, given his spotty reputation among academic historians, but the way he presents history -- a storytelling approach, emphasizing certain influential figures and particularly important or exciting events -- is really exciting and a little bit inspirational. One traditional work of "narrative history" that I've often seen mentioned is Robert Carlyle's The French Revolution, and while it sounds somewhat appealing I'm very hesitant to read it. Carlyle is obviously infamous for his reductionist outlook of history, and is essentially the mascot of the kind of intellectual childishness that I worry I may be associated with, for not preferring modern social history. Moreover, Carlyle's theories are very popular with current white supremacists, making me even more wary.

Can a proper historian (or at least a proper student of history) justify a preference for narrative history, or is it deterministic and immature to perceive history as a "collection of stories"? Is there an ongoing struggle between social historians and narrative historians, or am I rambling about an imaginary distinction?

Previous Weeks

This weekly feature is a place to discuss new developments in fields of history and archaeology. This can be newly discovered documents and archaeological sites, recent publications, documents that have just become publicly available through digitization or the opening of archives, and new theories and interpretations.

To talk about this generally, please keep responses confined to this post. Top level responses which are not nominated answers will be removed.

Edit: Yes, it should be Best of June for the title. I'm just an idiot. Ignore that.

I stumbled across a video that shows how this instructor believes different sword and shield methods were used, namely the use of the buckler and the Viking shield. This let me down a rabbit hole into the depths of youtube videos and various sites that seemed to be poorly researched.

My question is fairly simple and somewhat broad: from the Fall of Rome until the early Renaissance, what were the common sword and more interesting to me, shield fighting techniques. I am aware that people grasped swords across the blade other fairly simple techniques but the subtle nuisances of different sword and shield types is lost on me. Thanks!