History Continues

French historian, medievalist and popular TV personality Duby is an adherent of the Annales school of historiography, which emphasizes the material conditions of life over the deeds of politicians and warriors. He devotes nearly half of these dry, modest memoirs to an exhaustive account of how he researched and wrote his 1951 dissertation on the French judicial system of the 11th century. Elsewhere he discusses television as a communication tool for historians; his travels in Spain, Italy, North Africa and Mexico; and 12th-century knight William the Marshal, regent of England. While concentrating on his working methods, discoveries and preoccupations, Duby does touch briefly on such topics as the role of the artist in medieval society, family structure and the exchange economy in the Middle Ages and the dynamics of chivalry. (Nov.)