Peter Arnade and Walter Prevenier. Honor, Vengeance, and Social Trouble

Drawing from the rich repository of pardon letters found in the archives in Lille, France, Peter Arnade and Walter Prevenier construct a multitextured analysis of the worlds in which men of all stations in the Burgundian Netherlands—nobles, merchants, artisans, and even musicians and actors—constructed narratives to convince the duke of the value of their claims to his grace and pardon. Most successful petitioners were male, and the letters reveal a world where men’s shame and honor are determinative. The book crystallizes Prevenier’s profound, decades-long engagement with this material as both scholar and teacher. This explains its confident mastery of sources and its delightful presentation, designed to appeal to colleagues and students alike. Apart from the introduction and conclusion, the book consists of four thematic chapters. The first three explore issues of social discord, violence, and marital conflict; the fourth consists of a single, in-depth case study. The book’s structure allows the authors to address three particular audiences: scholars seasoned in social history, students learning their craft, and history buffs eager for a good tale. Each chapter begins with the telling of a particular benchmark story that draws the reader into the analysis of each chapter’s specific social problem complex. The authors then weave in other sources, including literary tales from the contemporary Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles, as well as similar carefully chosen pardon letters to develop the chosen themes. Each chapter’s penultimate section consolidates those themes without loss of narrative particularity, as it reinvokes the struggles of the now-familiar dramatis personae. Finally, true to their vision of this work as both scholarly and pedagogical, the authors end each chapter with full translations of the pardon letters upon which they base their analysis. These do double duty as evidence and as narrative. Historical analysis thus takes on a personal flavor, and the reader, having become engrossed in the story, is likewise drawn into the analysis. Sturdy scholarly citations illuminate the analytic portion of the text; however, the quantity of notes is calculated to interest and inform readers without overwhelming them. Specific places and people mentioned in the translated pardon letters are carefully annotated. Such details may be familiar to experts, but students and history buffs will certainly appreciate this explanatory apparatus.

Appeal · Art · Craft · Honor · Literature · Media studies · Narrative · Political science · Section (typography) · Shame · Sociology · Visual arts · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Law · Reformation and Early Modern Christianity · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies