Writing History in Renaissance Italy

Writing History in Renaissance Italy PDF Author: Gary Ianziti
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674061527
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 433

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Book Description
Leonardo Bruni (1370Ð1444) is widely recognized as the most important humanist historian of the early Renaissance. But why this recognition came aboutÑand what it has meant for the field of historiographyÑhas long been a matter of confusion and controversy. Writing History in Renaissance Italy offers a fresh approach to the subject by undertaking a systematic, work-by-work investigation that encompasses for the first time the full range of BruniÕs output in history and biography. The study is the first to assess in detail the impact of the classical Greek historians on the development of humanist methods of historical writing. It highlights in particular the importance of Thucydides and PolybiusÑauthors Bruni was among the first in the West to read, and whose analytical approach to politics led him in new directions. Yet the revolution in history that unfolds across the four decades covered in this study is no mere revival of classical models: Ianziti constantly monitors BruniÕs position within the shifting hierarchies of power in Florence, drawing connections between his various historical works and the political uses they were meant to serve. The result is a clearer picture of what Bruni hoped to achieve, and a more precise analysis of the dynamics driving his new approach to the past. Bruni himself emerges as a protagonist of the first order, a figure whose location at the center of power was a decisive factor shaping his innovations in historical writing.

Writing History in Renaissance Italy

Writing History in Renaissance Italy PDF Author: Gary Ianziti
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674061527
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 433

Get Book Here

Book Description
Leonardo Bruni (1370Ð1444) is widely recognized as the most important humanist historian of the early Renaissance. But why this recognition came aboutÑand what it has meant for the field of historiographyÑhas long been a matter of confusion and controversy. Writing History in Renaissance Italy offers a fresh approach to the subject by undertaking a systematic, work-by-work investigation that encompasses for the first time the full range of BruniÕs output in history and biography. The study is the first to assess in detail the impact of the classical Greek historians on the development of humanist methods of historical writing. It highlights in particular the importance of Thucydides and PolybiusÑauthors Bruni was among the first in the West to read, and whose analytical approach to politics led him in new directions. Yet the revolution in history that unfolds across the four decades covered in this study is no mere revival of classical models: Ianziti constantly monitors BruniÕs position within the shifting hierarchies of power in Florence, drawing connections between his various historical works and the political uses they were meant to serve. The result is a clearer picture of what Bruni hoped to achieve, and a more precise analysis of the dynamics driving his new approach to the past. Bruni himself emerges as a protagonist of the first order, a figure whose location at the center of power was a decisive factor shaping his innovations in historical writing.

The Renaissance of Letters

The Renaissance of Letters PDF Author: Paula Findlen
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429770952
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 330

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Book Description
The Renaissance of Letters traces the multiplication of letter-writing practices between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries in the Italian peninsula and beyond to explore the importance of letters as a crucial document for understanding the Italian Renaissance. This edited collection contains case studies, ranging from the late medieval re-emergence of letter-writing to the mid-seventeenth century, that offer a comprehensive analysis of the different dimensions of late medieval and Renaissance letters—literary, commercial, political, religious, cultural, social, and military—which transformed them into powerful early modern tools. The Renaissance was an era that put letters into the hands of many kinds of people, inspiring them to see reading, writing, receiving, and sending letters as an essential feature of their identity. The authors take a fresh look at the correspondence of some of the most important humanists of the Italian Renaissance, including Niccolò Machiavelli and Isabella d'Este, and consider the use of letters for others such as merchants and physicians. This book is essential reading for scholars and students of Early Modern History and Literature, Renaissance Studies, and Italian Studies. The engagement with essential primary sources renders this book an indispensable tool for those teaching seminars on Renaissance history and literature.

Printing, Writers and Readers in Renaissance Italy

Printing, Writers and Readers in Renaissance Italy PDF Author: Brian Richardson
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521576932
Category : Design
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
The spread of printing to Renaissance Italy had a dramatic impact on all users of books. As works came to be diffused more widely and cheaply, so authors had to adapt their writing and their methods of publishing to the demands and opportunities of the new medium, and reading became a more frequent and user-friendly activity. Printing, Writers and Readers in Renaissance Italy focuses on this interaction between the book industry and written culture. After describing the new technology and the contexts of publishing and bookselling, it examines the continuities and changes faced by writers in the shift from manuscript to print, the extent to which they benefited from print in their careers, and the greater accessibility of books to a broader spectrum of readers, including women and the less well educated. This is the first integrated study of a topic of central importance in Italian and European culture.

Measured Words

Measured Words PDF Author: Arielle Saiber
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 1487513313
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 391

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Book Description
Measured Words explores the rich commerce between computation and writing that proliferated in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Italy. In this captivating and generously illustrated work, Arielle Saiber studies the relationship between number, shape, and the written word in the works of four exceptional thinkers of the time: Leon Battista Alberti, Luca Pacioli, Niccolò Tartaglia, and Giambattista Della Porta. Although these Renaissance humanists came from different social classes and practised the mathematical and literary arts at varying levels of sophistication, they were all guided by a sense that there exist deep ontological and epistemological bonds between computational and verbal thinking and production. Their shared view that a network or continuity exists between the literary arts and mathematics yielded extraordinary results, from Alberti’s treatise on cryptography and Pacioli’s design calculations for the Roman alphabet to Tartaglia’s poetic solutions of cubic equations and Della Porta’s dramatic applications of geometry. Through lively, cogent analysis of these and other related texts of the period, Measured Words presents, literally and figuratively, brilliant examples of what interdisciplinary work can offer us.

Being a Jesuit in Renaissance Italy

Being a Jesuit in Renaissance Italy PDF Author: Camilla Russell
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674261127
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
A new history illuminates the Society of Jesus in its first century from the perspective of those who knew it best: the early Jesuits themselves. The Society of Jesus was established in 1540. In the century that followed, thousands sought to become Jesuits and pursue vocations in religious service, teaching, and missions. Drawing on scores of unpublished biographical documents housed at the Roman Jesuit Archive, Camilla Russell illuminates the lives of those who joined the Society, building together a religious and cultural presence that remains influential the world over. Tracing Jesuit life from the Italian provinces to distant missions, Russell sheds new light on the impact and inner workings of the Society. The documentary record reveals a textual network among individual members, inspired by Ignatius of LoyolaÕs Spiritual Exercises. The early Jesuits took stock of both quotidian and spiritual experiences in their own records, which reflect a community where the worldly and divine overlapped. Echoing the SocietyÕs foundational writings, members believed that each JesuitÕs personal strengths and inclinations offered a unique contribution to the wholeÑan attitude that helps explain the SocietyÕs widespread appeal from its first days. Focusing on the JesuitsÕ own words, Being a Jesuit in Renaissance Italy offers a new lens on the history of spirituality, identity, and global exchange in the Renaissance. What emerges is a kind of genetic codeÑa thread connecting the key Jesuit works to the first generations of Jesuits and the Society of Jesus as it exists today.

Writing Southern Italy Before the Renaissance

Writing Southern Italy Before the Renaissance PDF Author: Ronald G. Musto
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351767399
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
This volume traces the work of trecento historians of the Mezzogiorno, analyzing it through current methodological and theoretical frameworks. Questioning the current consensus, the book examines how the South as a cultural "other" began evolving over the fourteenth century, and reconsiders the nineteenth-century "Southern Question" concerning the Mezzogiorno’s history, culture and people and its lingering negative image in Europe and America. It also focuses on specific histories, authors and historiographical issues, and reviews how new understandings of the Mediterranean have begun to alter our perceptions of the South in a new global context and as the basis for new historical research.

The Horizon Book of Daily Life in Renaissance Italy

The Horizon Book of Daily Life in Renaissance Italy PDF Author: Charles L. Mee
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Florence
Languages : en
Pages : 136

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Book Description
Contrasts Italian Renaissance cultural, economic, and technological achievements with the widespread crime, violence, and political greed of the era.

Daily Life in Renaissance Italy

Daily Life in Renaissance Italy PDF Author: Elizabeth Storr Cohen
Publisher: Greenwood
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
Discover what life was like for ordinary people in Renaissance Italy through this unique resource that paints a full portrait of everday living.

Strong Words

Strong Words PDF Author: Lauro Martines
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 9780801873164
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
Neighborhood voices in poetry - The verbal web of patronage - Prayer in the urban setting - Love and history : men against women - Suicide of a poet - Alienation : the outsider as poet - Cruelty in the community - Seduction and family space - Poetry as political memory - Crisis in the generation of 1494.

Women's Writing in Italy, 1400–1650

Women's Writing in Italy, 1400–1650 PDF Author: Virginia Cox
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 0801888190
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 495

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Book Description
Winner, 2009 Best Book Award, Society for the Study of Early Modern WomenWinner, 2008 PROSE Award for Best Book in Language, Literature, and Linguistics. Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division of the Association of American Publishers This is the first comprehensive study of the remarkably rich tradition of women’s writing that flourished in Italy between the fifteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Virginia Cox documents this tradition and both explains its character and scope and offers a new hypothesis on the reasons for its emergence and decline. Cox combines fresh scholarship with a revisionist argument that overturns existing historical paradigms for the chronology of early modern Italian women’s writing and questions the historiographical commonplace that the tradition was brought to an end by the Counter Reformation. Using a comparative analysis of women's activities as artists, musicians, composers, and actresses, Cox locates women's writing in its broader contexts and considers how gender reflects and reinvents conventional narratives of literary change.