Accounting for Affection / Early Modern History: Society and Culture (PDF)

Caroline Castiglione is Associate Professor of Italian Studies and History at Brown University, USA. She is the author of Patrons and Adversaries: Nobles and Villagers in Italian Politics, 1640-1760 (2005), winner of the Helen and Howard R. Marraro Prize from the Society for Italian Historical Studies in 2006.

“The principal theme of the book is the determination of elite women in this period to negotiate with their relatives and, if needs be, the law-courts, in support of their rights and those of their children. … These intertwined stories form part of a grander narrative proposed by Castiglione that contributes to our understanding of the history of emotions. … all will welcome this study of early modern motherhood based on the testimony of early modern mothers.” (M. Laven, English Historical Review, Vol. 133 (560), February, 2018)

“This book traces the triumph of motherly love among the highest elites of seventeenth-century Rome. … Accounting for Affection will be required reading for historians of the family, the early modern state, and the role of emotions in history. Castiglione has done the field a service, and successfully placed motherhood, and mothers, at the heart of the early modern political imaginary.” (P. Renée Baernstein, Journal of Modern History, Vol. 89 (1), March, 2017)



“Castiglione is to be commended for her own resourcefulness in assembling a large quantity of first-person accounts of the women’s range of interests and enterprises. … her book is a valuable account of the importance of women in the family dynamics and family politics of the early modern Roman aristocracy.” (Stanley Chojnacki, American Historical Review, Vol. 121 (4), October, 2016)