Monday, 23 April 2012

Progress and identifying Hibbert's view

After finishing Hibbert's book I have to say it was quite an interesting read, I've now delved deep into Michael Mallett's book "The Borgia's: The rise and fall of the most infamous family in history". Marion Johnson's "The Borgia's" has also arrived and unlike the other books it takes the form of a illustrated biography, with pictures, portraits, maps, family tree's, drawings/paintings of particular events/individuals and so on.

Now on to a more important topic is Hibbert's view,  Hibbert's view is difficult to identify as he writes in a very objective manner, usually using accounts from others and different sources to unravel the information he presents. The implied view is that he dismisses the vindictive and negative reputation given of the Borgia's, but accepts that at times they committed acts/made actions that would have been easily frowned upon and could be seen as crimes/deceit.
His opinion seems to me as a more neutral view of the Borgia's (or Rodrigo for that matter), where he doesn't side strongly either way.
In his bibliography its interesting to note that he focuses mostly on contemporary sources.

Thursday, 12 April 2012

Planning

With the arrival of Michael Mallett's "The Borgias", which I will be beginning to read next week, I'm going to now start the planning of the actual writing of my project. Hopefully I'll be able to begin the early stages of writing next week/soon.
I'll begin doing further review of Hibbert's/Tuchman's views soon as well. However, upon reading Hibbert's book I haven't identified what his view actually is, he's very objective and justified with his writing and he uses sources/accounts from others to express his information. Still, I'll be further assessing the two later.
Apologies for not blogging lately as well, hopefully time frees up.