Comments on: Out of Action

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Anonymous — Mon, 07 May 2007 21:34:15 +0000

Machiavelli’s history of Florence can be a deeply flawed but illuminating companion to Wallace’s analysis of Trecento Italy and humanism in particular. It might be a good place to start if you haven’t already gotten to it.

Also interesting is how Wallace syncs up with other revisionists of the medium aevum like Mumford and Kropotkin, both of whom have much to say on the English guild structure of that time.

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semanticdrifter — Fri, 04 May 2007 19:08:03 +0000

How about the historical digressions? I’m digging the way Wallace will go off on, say, the way English guild structure played into the Canterbury Tales but I feel like I wish I knew more about Italian history. Lombardy sounds like it was a really interesting place to be a poet, and I kind of get the feeling that Wallace is giving my man Petrarch the short end of the stick.

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Anonymous — Fri, 04 May 2007 18:55:18 +0000

Yeah I can see how it might be resistant to easy distillation. Not really a bullet points kind of read but great nonetheless. By the time I’d gotten to Chaucer I’d already made it through Boccaccio and Petrarch (in translation) and Wallace’s views deepened my already great appreciation for Chaucer’s accomplishments.

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semanticdrifter — Fri, 04 May 2007 16:53:48 +0000

Indeed. I’m finishing up Chaucerian Polity. I had to give a ten minute presentation on it, and I had a pretty hard time boiling down all 400 pages into digestible chunks. I wish I had read more Boccaccio and Petrarch before I started. As it stands, I just have to take Wallace’s word for all the comparisons he’s making.

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Anonymous — Fri, 04 May 2007 16:46:43 +0000

You must be reading David Wallace.