This book traces the life of Giacomo Leopardi by examining four different yet interrelated aspects: his social origins and class in relation to his evolving conception of nobility; the mixture of idealism and misogynism in his attitude toward women and in his conception of love; his poems and prose on the theme of Italian independence; and his philosophical materialism as expressed in his poetry, intellectual diary, and essays. Frank Rosengarten pays particular attention to the ways in which the thought of Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche illuminates Leopardi’s world view.
This full-length history of Scotland spans 18 centuries, from the Picts to the 1980s. The book focuses on social and cultural history, including life in the towns, the changing role of the nobility and the shifting images of Scottish identity.
The gentry played a central role in medieval England, yet this is the first sustained attempt to explore the origins of the gentry and to account for its contours and peculiarities as a social formation. The book offers definition and conceptual vigour, and argues that the gentry, a kind of lesser nobility, was formed between the mid-thirteenth and the mid-fourteenth century.
The English Nobility in the Late Middle Ages - The Fourteenth-Century Political Community
The life of the medieval noble was dominated by four things: warfare, politics, land and family. It is with these central themes that this book is concerned. Given-Wilson combines comprehensive synthesis with lucid analysis in this vivid reconstruction of political society in late medieval England. Arranged thematically, it is ideal for student use.
One of the most important problems facing English monarchs in the 14th century was relations with the nobility -- a group of about twenty men of the rank of earl and above. In 1327, a party of nobles deposed and imprisoned Edward II; in 1399, another group deposed Richard II and the leader of the "revolutionary" party then put himself on the throne.
