Introduction
Carlo Ginzburg and I arrived at ucla at the same time in 1988, but without either of us, so far as I remember, being aware of the other; he taking up the chair of Italian Renaissance studies in the History department—over eighty strong at the time—I as a visiting lecturer. We met the following year after I joined the department, and introducing himself he welcomed me warmly. I knew Carlo by reputation only, he of me perhaps via association at one remove with History Workshop, the journal where in 1980 he had published ‘Clues’, the most influential of all his many essays. I soon discovered that while poles apart in outlook and character, we had more in common than I expected, and became fast friends. What divided us were our areas of prior concern. The work that had made Carlo famous as a historian, though by no means exhausting his range, was a highly original anthropology of the past, casting new light on the lives of the forgotten or oppressed. My writing had lain at the opposite extreme, looking at macro-structures of power and those who ruled through them. To all appearances, each of us had little sensibility for the enquiries of the other. To my surprise, however, in due course it became clear that there was one field where our interests coincided, though not our methods of pursuing them. That was the realm of ideas—roughly speaking, intellectual history.
Continua a leggere l’introduzione e il carteggio su «New Left Review».