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The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism: Volume 3, The Renaissance
This 1999 volume was the first to explore as part of an unbroken continuum the critical legacy both of the humanist rediscovery of ancient learning and of its neoclassical reformulation. Focused on what is arguably the most complex phase in the transmission of the Western literary-critical heritage, the book encompasses those issues that helped shape the way European writers thought about literature from the late Middle Ages to the late seventeenth century. These issues touched almost every facet of Western intellectual endeavour, as well as the historical, cultural, social, scientific, and technological contexts in which that activity evolved. From the interpretative reassessment of the major ancient poetic texts, this volume addresses the emergence of the literary critic in Europe by exploring poetics, prose fiction, contexts of criticism, neoclassicism, and national developments. Sixty-one chapters by internationally respected scholars are supported by an introduction, detailed bibliographies for further investigation and a full index.
Culture and Power
Traditionally grand ducal Tuscany and its cultural politics have been viewed through the lens of absolutism. Based on a wide range of newly found sources and building on recent revisionist scholarship, this study uses the universities of Pisa and Siena to expose the contradictions and the tensions which characterised the grand duchy. Setting the universities against the diplomatic, military, administrative, economic, ecclesiastical, and cultural development of the grand duchy, it shows how innovation mixed with tradition and local privileges were not only upheld but extended significantly.
The Reach of the Republic of Letters
This volume questions the present-day assumption holding the Italian academies to be the model for the European literary and learned society, by juxtaposing them to other types of contemporary literary and learned associations in several Western European countries.
Sonnets for Michelangelo
The most published and lauded woman writer of early sixteenth-century Italy, Vittoria Colonna (1490–1547) in effect defined what was the "acceptable" face of female authorship for her time. Hailed by the generation's leading male literati as an equal, she was praised both for her impeccable command of Petrarchan style and for the unimpeachable chastity and piety of the persona she promoted through her literary works. This book presents for the very first time a body of Colonna's verse that reveals much about her poetic aims and outlook, while also casting new light on one of the most famous friendships of the age. Sonnets for Michelangelo, originally presented in manuscript form to her close friend Michelangelo Buonarroti as a personal gift, illustrates the striking beauty and originality of Colonna's mature lyric voice and distinguishes her as a poetic innovator who would be widely imitated by female writers in Italy and Europe in the sixteenth century. After three centuries of relative neglect, this new edition promises to restore Colonna to her rightful place at the forefront of female cultural production in the Renaissance.
Performing Witchcraft, Exorcism, and Abortion on the Italian Renaissance Stage
Antonfrancesco Grazzini’s plays, La Spiritata (The Possessed Girl) and La Strega (The Witch), are available in English for the first time, with notes and an “Introduction.” These plays deal with witchcraft, superstition, sexuality, and abortion. The context for such themes is analyzed in the “Introduction.” Grazzini enhanced literary drama with elements from popular performances. He influenced other playwrights, including in England, where The Possessed Girl was adapted as the Elizabethan comedy, The Bugbears. Writer and linguist John Florio used Grazzini’s plays in his lexicon of Italian for English learners. Grazzini celebrated artistic and popular traditions of Renaissance Florence; he is significant for writing and preserving many literary genres, especially the burlesque and carnivalesque. He participated in Florentine spectacle and theater, as a writer of plays, a composer of interludes, and a chronicler of festive events. His importance to the development of the Italian language is evident in his plays.
The Italian Novella
The novella was an important medieval and Renaissance prose narrative form that developed out of exempla and didactic literature and contributed to modern narrative forms. This is the first collection of essays dedicated to comprehensive scholarship on the Italian novella. The essays range from work on the Decameron , the epitome of the genre, to studies of sixteenth century authors who often utilized transgressive or sexual themes in their novellas.
Ambitious Form
Ambitious Form describes the transformation of Italian sculpture during the neglected half century between the death of Michelangelo and the rise of Bernini. The book follows the Florentine careers of three major sculptors--Giambologna, Bartolomeo Ammanati, and Vincenzo Danti--as they negotiated the politics of the Medici court and eyed one another's work, setting new aims for their art in the process. Only through a comparative look at Giambologna and his contemporaries, it argues, can we understand them individually--or understand the period in which they worked. Michael Cole shows how the concerns of central Italian artists changed during the last decades of the Cinquecento. Whereas their...
Shakespeare's Practical Jokes
Female victims and female jokers -- The privileges of rank -- Falstaff -- The ideal victim -- How far can you go? -- The triumph over shame -- Practical jokes and evil practices.
