Una historia desnuda. Subjetividad, autoría y discurso histórico en la temprana modernidad.

A theoretical debate took place in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries between those in favour of a ‘naked’ historical writing, deprived of assessments and rhetorical devices, and those in favour of a more traditional idea of history, in which the author’s opinions and eloquence were considered of great value and key to history’s moral and political instruction. Important issues regarding the nature and duties of history were involved in this debate, which also had a significant impact on the idea of the historian as an author and on subjectivity and bias in historical narrative. In this article I will consider these particular aspects of the debate in the theoretical treatises written by Agostino Mascardi (1636), Jeronimo de San Jose (1651) and Pierre Le Moyne (1670).