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In Renaissance Italy there existed a rich interplay between two cultural practices frequently regarded as entirely separate and mutually antagonistic: the humanistic study of the ancient world and ancient literature, and the oral and improvisational performance of poetry, which constituted one of the most popular forms of entertainment. A Sudden Frenzy explores the development and impact of these Renaissance practices of improvisation and oral poetry. James K. Coleman shows how the confluence of humanist culture and the art of oral poetry resulted in an extraordinary turn toward improvisation and spontaneity that profoundly influenced poetry, music, and politics. By examining the culture of improvisation, this book reveals the ways in which Renaissance thinkers transcended cultural dichotomies, both in theory and in practice. Drawing on a wide range of sources, including letters, poetry, visual art, and philosophical texts, A Sudden Frenzy reveals the far-reaching and sometimes surprising ways that these phenomena shaped cultural developments in the Italian Renaissance and beyond.
An exploration of the many depictions of Charlemagne in the Italian tradition of chivalric narratives in verse and prose. Chivalric tales and narratives concerning Charlemagne were composed and circulated in Italy from the early fourteenth to the mid-sixteenth century (and indeed subsequently flourished in forms of popular theatre which continue today). But are they history or fiction? Myth or fact? Cultural memory or deliberate appropriation? Elite culture or popular entertainment? Oral or written, performed or read? This book explores the many depictions of the Emperor in the Italian tradition of chivalric narratives in verse and prose. Beginning in the age of Dante with the earliest tales...
In the Mirror of the Prodigal Son provides a comprehensive history of the function of the parable of the prodigal son in shaping religious identity in medieval and Reformation Europe. By investigating a wealth of primary sources, the book reveals the interaction between commentaries, sermons, religious plays, and images as a decisive factor in the increasing popularity of the prodigal son. Pietro Delcorno highlights the ingenious and multifaceted uses of the parable within pastoral activities and shows the pervasive presence of the Bible in medieval communication. The prodigal son narrative became the ideal story to convey a discourse about sin and penance, grace and salvation. In this way, the parable was established as the paradigmatic biography of any believer.
This history of early modern news focuses on news itself rather than specific material forms. Centering on movement through different media, time, and place, it makes the case for a truly comparative, pan-European history of news. After the Introduction, the second section, News Moves, explores how we think about and research news culture and news communication, demonstrating movement is more important than static forms. The third, News Sings, focuses on news ballads, comparing actors, publics, music, and soundscapes of ballad singing in several European cities, highlighting the central role of immaterial elements, such as sound, music and voice. The fourth, News Counts, argues that seeing news the way a machine might read it-through its metadata-is one way of moving beyond form, allowing us to find surprising commonalities in news cultures which differ greatly in both time and place.
This book studies the uses of orality in Italian society, across all classes, from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century, with an emphasis on the interrelationships between oral communication and the written word. The Introduction provides an overview of the topic as a whole and links the chapters together. Part 1 concerns public life in the states of northern, central, and southern Italy. The chapters examine a range of performances that used the spoken word or song: concerted shouts that expressed the feelings of the lower classes and were then recorded in writing; the proclamation of state policy by town criers; songs that gave news of executions; the exercise of power relations in soc...
Renaissance Mass Murder explores the devastating impact of war on the men and women of the Renaissance. In contrast to the picture of balance and harmony usually associated with the Renaissance, it uncovers in forensic detail a world in which sacks of Italian cities and massacres of civilians at the hands of French, German, Spanish, Swiss, and Italian troops were regular occurrences. The arguments presented are based on a wealth of evidence - histories and chronicles, poetry and paintings, sculpture and other objects - which together provide a new and startling history of sixteenth-century Italy and a social history of the Italian Wars. It outlines how massacres happened, how princes, soldie...
This volume focuses on early modern Italy and some of its key multilingual zones: Venice, Florence, and Rome. It offers a novel insight into the interplay and dynamic exchange of languages in the Italian peninsula, from the early fifteenth to the early seventeenth centuries. In particular, it examines the flexible linguistic practices of both the social and intellectual elite, and the men and women from the street. The point of departure of this project is the realization that most of the early modern speakers and authors demonstrate strong self-awareness as multilingual communicators. From the foul-mouthed gondolier to the learned humanist, language choice and use were carefully performed, ...
Italian Academies have typically been studied individually or in the context of specific cities, leaving an important lacuna in the scholarship on Italian culture and early modernity. Cutting across various disciplines, this volume traces the relationships of these Academies and explains how they prefigured networks like the République des letters.
The first comprehensive guide to women's promotion and use of textual culture, in manuscript and print, in Renaissance Italy.
Weaving together cultural history and critical imperial studies, Anastasia Stouraiti shows how war and territorial expansion shaped seventeenth-century Venetian culture and society. Using an extensive array of sources, Stouraiti tests conventional assumptions about republicanism, commercial peace and cross-cultural exchange and offers a new approach to the study of the Republic of Venice. By bringing the history of communication in dialogue with empire-building and colonial conquest in the Mediterranean, this book provides an original interpretation of the politics of knowledge in wartime Venice. Stouraiti demonstrates that the Venetian-Ottoman War of the Morea (1684-1699) was mediated through a diverse range of cultural mechanisms of patrician elite domination that orchestrated the production of popular consent. Exploring the militarisation of the public sphere and the orientalist discourse associated with it, Stouraiti exposes the surprising connections between bellicose foreign policies and domestic power politics in a state celebrated as the most serene republic of merchants.