Egodocuments and History

In the early 1950s the Dutch historian Jacques Presser invented the word egodocument, a generic term to cover a broad variety of textual forms including diaries, memoirs, personal letters and other types of autobiographical writing. In recent years egodocuments have moved into the centre of historical research, including topics like temporal developments, genre conventions, differences between types of egodocuments, motives for writing, intended audiences, differences between literary and documentary texts, private versus public character, relations with other texts or oral traditions. These and other questions are discussed in the contributions to this collection of essays. The authors cover a wide variety of egodocuments, written in Hebrew, Latin, German, French, Dutch, and English, and ranging in time from the Middle Ages to the modern period.    

Contents: RUDOLF DEKKER, Introduction   GADI ALGAZI, Food for thought: Hieronymus Wolf Grapples with the scholarly habitus   AVRIEL BAR-LEVAV, 'When I was alive': Jewish ethical wills as egodocuments   JEROEN BLAAK, Autobiographical reading and writing: the diary of David Beck (1624)   CAROLYN CHAPPELL LOUGEE, Emigration and memory: after 1685 and after 1789   HELGA MEISE, The limitations of family tradition and the barrier between public and private: Karoline von Hessen-Darmstadt's "Schreib=Calender''  between almanac and diary   STEPHEN CARL ARCH, Besides Benjamin Franklin: autobiography in America, 1750-1800   MICHAEL MASCUCH, John Wesley, superstar: periodicity, celebrity, and the sensibility of Methodist society in Wesley's Journal (1740-1791)   ARIANNE BAGGERMAN, Autobiography and family memory in the nineteenth century   GERARD SCHULTE NORDHOLT, Online diaries and websites on egodocuments

'Geschiedenis is niet saai, wetenschap is niet dor. Deze bundel bevat prachtige geschiedenissen die de focus van de zich-achter-de-oren-krabbende lezer zonder twijfel doet richten op die ene mini-geschiedenis: het eigen dagboek.' Frans Meulenberg in: Trouw, 19 oktober 2002

'In Egodocuments and History komt het sterke verband tussen identiteit en autobiografische geschriften in bijna alle artikelen naar voren. De gereconstrueerde sociale contekst fungeert daarbij als filter om de, door de auteur van het egodocument gepresenteerde, persona te nuanceren en te achterhalen wat de eventuele verborgen agenda's waren die ten grondslag lagen aan de dagboeken, brieven, morele wilsbeschikkingen en soortgelijke documenten. De vruchtbaarheid van deze bronnen en de bijgehorende bronnenkritische methode wordt onmiskenbaar aangetoond in deze bundel.' Bart van den Bosch in: Recensiebank historischhuis.nl

'This volume might have benefited from a native English-speaking proof-reader, to eliminate minor linguistic aberrations; and the absence of an index is lamentable. But the diverse contributions indicate many fruitful usages to which "egodocuments" may be put. Beverly Southgate, in: History 89 (2004) 1