Pictures of German Life in the XVth, XVIth, and XVIIth Centuries, Vol. II.

Freytag, Gustav, 1816-1895Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.8
Word count
745K words
Chapters
75

Tags

English Originals World History Historical ReappraisalSlow ReadingIllustrated GuidePopular NarrativeSocial ObservationFolk CustomsCross-Cultural View

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Pictures of German Life in the XVth, XVIth, and XVIIth Centuries, Vol. II.Author: Freytag, Gustav, 1816-1895,Language: English, Class: DD: History: General and Eastern Hemisphere: Germany, Release Date: Sep 22, 2010

Editor's review

This is the second volume of Gustav Freytag's work, which sketches scenes of German daily life from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century through the lens of social history; it is a work of cultural-historical essays rather than a strict dynastic history. The author excels at entering through the everyday—customs, law, family, trades, and religious festivals—bringing grand history down to ordinary people's tables, clothing, and rituals, and his prose carries the narrative warmth of a nineteenth-century man of letters. As a public-domain eBook, it is best used as a supplementary reader for understanding early modern German social life: it can be read alongside a general history, or dipped into chapter by chapter as interest dictates. Readers should note that the observations and interpretations reflect the author's own era, and some judgments bear the imprint of nineteenth-century ideas; they are best read against contemporary scholarship rather than taken as the sole authority. The English text poses some difficulty for non-native readers.

Who it's for

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Reading tips

  1. Start with the table of contents and choose chapters by theme—customs, family, trades—rather than reading straight through from page one.
  2. Keep a chronology of early modern German general history at hand to check persons and events as they arise.
  3. When you encounter judgments carrying nineteenth-century bias, note them and compare with contemporary research before deciding.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44
  45. 45
  46. 46
  47. 47
  48. 48
  49. 49
  50. 50
  51. 51
  52. 52
  53. 53
  54. 54
  55. 55
  56. 56
  57. 57
  58. 58
  59. 59
  60. 60
  61. 61
  62. 62
  63. 63
  64. 64
  65. 65
  66. 66
  67. 67
  68. 68
  69. 69
  70. 70
  71. 71
  72. 72
  73. 73
  74. 74
  75. 75

FAQ

Is this a strict academic history? No. It is closer to a nineteenth-century literary man's essays on social life, focusing on describing everyday customs and scenes; its methods of argument and standards of evidence differ from contemporary academic monographs, so it is suitable as a supplementary reader rather than a research basis.
Can I read Volume II without having read Volume I? Yes. The book is organized by themes and scenes, and the chapters are relatively independent; Volume II does not require Volume I first. It is best to begin with topics that interest you from the table of contents for a smoother reading experience.
What if my English is average and the reading is hard? Try a short chapter first and work through it paragraph by paragraph with a dictionary; or read a Chinese introduction to German social history to build background first, then return to the original, which will make it much easier to follow.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Freytag, Gustav, 1816-1895 Author

Gustav Freytag (1816–1895) was a German writer, playwright and literary theorist. Ten of his works are held in this collection, spanning dramatic theory, novels and cultural-historical essays. His study Die Technik des Dramas systematically examines dramatic structure, and its discussion of the five-act play is often cited in later scholarship on drama. The novel Soll und Haben (published in English as Debit and Credit) takes commercial life as its subject, portraying the professional ethics and social world of the bourgeois class, while Das Nest der Zaunkönige belongs among his narrative works. He also wrote the Pictures of German Life series, whose volumes sketch scenes of German social life from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century. His writing combines realistic description with cultural observation. Public information is limited, and details such as nationality and exact dates are not recorded in the collection, so no inference is made here.