ABSTRACT
Microhistory looks very hard at past small things and contrives to tell their story well. Easily said. But what does this simple statement mean? Every phrase here demands a second thought. To look very hard: what does that entail? Small things: what shape has this ‘small’, and what qualifies as ‘thing’? And what is it, indeed, to ‘tell well’? Nothing here is settled matter. And for good reason, as microhistory is perhaps a practice, merely, not a discipline, and is thus fluidly canon-free; if so, it settles reluctantly into fixed habits, if ever.
