Civic Christianity in Renaissance Italy - The Hospital of Treviso 1400 - 1530
Civic Christianity in Renaissance Italy explores the often subtle and sometimes harsh realities of life on the Venetian mainland. Focusing on the confraternity of Santa Maria dei Battuti and its Ospedale, the book addresses a number of well-established and newly articulated historiographical questions: the governance of territorial states, the civic and religious role of confraternities, the status of women and marginalized groups, and popular religious devotion. Adapting the objectives and methods of microhistory, D'Andrea has written neither a traditional history of political subjugation nor a straightforward survey of poor relief.
Contemporary observers described the young king in glowing terms. At over six feet tall, with rich auburn hair, clear skin, and a slender waist, he was, to many, "the handsomest prince ever seen." From this starting point in Henry VIII, the King and His Court, biographer extraordinare Alison Weir reveals a Henry VIII far different from the obese, turkey-leg gnawing, womanizing tyrant who has gone down in history. Henry embodied the Renaissance ideal of a man of many talents--musician, composer, linguist, scholar, sportsman, warrior--indeed, the Dutch humanist Erasmus (not a man inclined to flattery) declared him a "universal genius."
Renaissance Bodies - The Human Figure in English Culture c. 1540 - 1660
Renaissance Bodies is a unique collection of views on the ways in which the human image has been represented in the arts and literature of English Renaissance society. The subjects discussed range from high art to popular culture – from portraits of Elizabeth I to polemical prints mocking religious fanaticism – and include miniatures, manners, anatomy, drama and architectural patronage. The authors, art historians and literary critics, reflect diverse critical viewpoints, and the 78 illustrations present a fascinating exhibition of the often strange and haunting images of the period.
In this informative and lively volume, the author synthesizes a large body of literature on the condition of western European women in the Renaissance centuries (1350-1650), crafting a much-needed and unified overview of women's experience in Renaissance society. Utilizing the perspectives of social, church, and intellectual history, King looks at women of all classes, in both usual and unusual settings.
ken English: Dialects and the Politics of Language in Renaissance Writings
The triumph of English in the Renaissance--the successful efforts to advance the status of English over Latin and the continental vernaculars--has long been considered the major linguistic event of the period. Too often, Paula Blank argues, this has obscured the fact that English itself was divided by internal contests. By investigating the ways that early modern writers represented dialects, Blank reveals how "English" itself was a construct of the Renaissance, produced by discriminations made among alternative then-current "Englishes".
