Historians and Historiography in the Italian Renaissance

A monumental study, Historians and Historiography provides a comprehensive survey of the vast body of historical literature produced in Italy during the Renaissance. Eric Cochrane traces the emergence of humanist historiography from the chronicle tradition of the Middle Ages; its increasing diversification in form, scope, and content; and, finally, its demise toward the beginning of the seventeenth century, when, he argues it succumbed to its own limitations. In the process Cochrane covers virtually every historian whose work appeared in print during this period, demonstrating how historical thinking and writing are intimately related to the political circumstances and intellectual outlook of an age.