Across the Alps: Italian Religious Culture in French Translation

Abstract

In a cross-cultural history volume, one could be tempted to think that a focus on the interaction of French and Italian culture is, as it were, child’s play, when compared with possible essays on Africa and Europe, or Asia and North America, or the culture of royal courts and that of the working class, or any number of not-so-obvious juxtapositions. Really, one might ask, is there, and was there in times past, such a great difference between French and Italian cultures? Was the degree of otherness very significant at all?