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A Companion to Music at the Habsburgs Courts in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, edited by Andrew H. Weaver, is the first in-depth survey of Habsburg musical patronage over a broad timeframe. Bringing together existing research and drawing upon primary sources, the authors, all established experts, provide overviews of the musical institutions, the functions of music, the styles and genres cultivated, and the historical, political, and cultural contexts for music at the Habsburg courts. The wide geographical scope includes the imperial courts in Vienna and Prague, the royal court in Madrid, the archducal courts in Graz and Innsbruck, and others. This broad view of Habsburg musical activities affirms the dynasty’s unique position in the cultural life of early modern Europe. Contributors are Lawrence Bennett, Charles E. Brewer, Drew Edward Davies, Paula Sutter Fichtner, Alexander J. Fisher, Christine Getz, Beth L. Glixon, Jeffrey Kurtzman, Virginia Christy Lamothe, Honey Meconi, Sara Pecknold, Jonas Pfohl, Pablo L. Rodríguez, Steven Saunders, Herbert Seifert, Louise K. Stein, and Andrew H. Weaver.
This book explores an anonymous sixteenth-century portrait of Muley al-Hassan, the Hafsid king of Tunis (ca. 1528–1550), that bears witness to relations between North Africa, the Habsburgs, and the Ottomans. While Muley al-Hassan appears frequently in the vast literature on Charles V Habsburg, he is overshadowed by the emperor. Here he emerges as a protagonist, a figure whose shifting reputation can be traced well into the seventeenth century. Images of the King of Tunis circulated in broadsheets, ephemeral images made for triumphal entries, manuscripts, tapestry designs, engravings, and books. The ceaseless production of Tunisian imagery allowed Europeans to face their North African counterparts through scenes of battle but also through imaginary encounters and festive cross-dressing. This book shows how portraits of Hafsid rulers challenge assumptions about the absolute divide between Christian and Muslim, sovereign and subject, the familiar and the foreign, and they put a face on the entangled histories of the early modern Mediterranean.
In The Ottoman Threat and Crusading on the Eastern Border of Christendom during the Fifteenth Century Liviu Pilat and Ovidiu Cristea focus on less-known aspects of the later crusades in Eastern Europe, examining the ideals of holy war and political pragmatism. They analyze the Ottoman threat and crusading as political themes through a unifying vision based in the political realities of the fifteenth century and the complex relationship between crusading, Ottoman expansion, and the political interests of the Christian states in the region. Approaching the relationship between the borders of Christendom and crusading as a highly complex phenomenon, Pilat and Cristea introduce new elements to the image of Latin Christendom's frontier from the perspective of Catholic-Orthodox relations, frontier ideology, and crusading rhetoric in political propaganda.
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...
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This is the first comprehensive book on the Arthurian legend in medieval and Renaissance Italy since Edmund Gardner's 1930 The Arthurian Legend in Italian Literature. Arthurian material reached all levels of Italian society, from princely courts with their luxury books and frescoed palaces, to the merchant classes and even popular audiences in the piazza, which enjoyed shorter retellings in verse and prose. Unique assemblages emerge on Italian soil, such as the Compilation of Rustichello da Pisa or the innovative Tavola Ritonda, in versions made for both Tuscany and the Po Valley. Chapters examine the transmission of the French romances across Italy; reworkings in various Italian regional dialects; the textual relations of the prose Tristan; narrative structures employed by Italian writers; later ottava rima poetic versions in the new medium of printed books; the Arthurian-themed art of the Middle Ages and Renaissance; and more. The Arthur of the Italians offers a rich corpus of new criticism by scholars who have brought the Italian Arthurian material back into critical conversation.
This original study of pre-modern Middle East history, provides fascinating new information about the conflict relations between the two great Muslim empires, the Ottomans and the Mamluks, and military confrontations between Eastern medieval armies.