European history: Renaissance Books

Book SynopsisTrade Review"Chapman has written an excellent book, a fit companion for her award-winning Legal Epic. Courts, Jurisdictions, and Law is engaging and informative, economically expressed without sacrificing clarity or detail, and everywhere displaying expert knowledge of early modern law and of Milton’s body of work. With her twin studies, Chapman has secured a place at the fore of recent scholarship on early modern literature and law." * Modern Philology *"Alison Chapman’s Courts, Jurisdictions, and Law in John Milton and His Contemporaries. . . represents a crucial addition to not only Milton studies but to seventeenth-century legal studies in England." * Comitatus *“[An] outstanding new monograph… Chapman’s book proves beyond reasonable doubt that legal issues played an enduring part in Milton’s thinking, and gives a detailed sense of how they did so. It is clearly written and well-informed on a complex subject. The book will be valuable to Miltonists, and to scholars working at the intersection of early modern law and literature.” * Review of English Studies *“Chapman’s new book, Courts, Jurisdictions, and Law in John Milton and His Contemporaries, extends her prior examinations and makes a significant contribution to our understanding of how Milton approached the existing patchwork of English legal systems.” * New Rambler Review *"Well suited to an intersectional field of law and literature that places questions of race, gender and religion at its center." * Seventeenth-Century News *“Chapman’s work is both highly original and exceptionally readable, bringing together imaginative engagement with legal language, convincing arguments, and refreshingly forthright responses to other scholars. She presents unfamiliar legal matters in lucid, sometimes witty prose and cautions her readers against importing modern assumptions into early modern English literature. Students and scholars of Milton will benefit enormously from her carefully developed contextualization of Milton’s assumptions regarding jurisprudential fields, specific legal terms, and his own rhetorical practices.” -- Mary Nyquist, University of Toronto“With careful attention to legal language, Chapman pulls at the tensions between libel and defamation, convincingly showing Milton’s continued interest in such questions. These are valuable new readings that explain several apparent tensions, and they show that Milton’s legal orientation can account for many of the most oddly vituperative moments in his prose. This is a very welcome addition to Milton studies.” -- Christopher Warren, Carnegie Mellon University"Chapman considers the multiple, jostling, real-world legal systems in conflict in seventeenth-century England and brings to light the poet John Milton’s use of the various legal systems and vocabularies of the time... Chapman highlights the variety and nuance in Milton’s juridical toolkit and his subtle use of competing legal traditions in pursuit of justice." * Law & Social Inquiry *"[This book] is not only an education in early modern law and in Miltonic rhetoric but also, in its acute exposition of the legalistic, if not authoritarian, bias of the great republican, Puritan, and libertarian, one of the best recent critical studies of Milton." * Milton Quarterly *Table of ContentsA Note on Texts List of Abbreviations Preface: Making Sense of Many Laws Chapter 1: Introduction Chapter 2: Defending One’s Good Name: Free Speech in the Early Prose Chapter 3: Monstrous Books: Areopagitica and the Problem of Libel Chapter 4: Civil Law and Equity in the Divorce Tracts Chapter 5: Defending Pro Se Defensio Chapter 6: The Tithes of War: Paying God Back in Paradise Lost Chapter 7: “Justice in Thir Own Hands”: Local Courts in the Late Prose Afterword: Justice in the Columbia Manuscript Acknowledgments Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"There is a great deal to appreciate and to enjoy in this theory-rich book, which moves as freely as a willful anachronism through material across its four central essays. . . . de Grazia’s work in particular offers so much of promise to scholars as well as lay readers of Shakespeare that it practically ensures that the next generation of Shakespeareans will have plenty in the way of bardological thinking to do.” * Times Literary Supplement *"One takes one’s leave of Four Shakespearean Period Pieces, as I have now done twice, with the feeling of being smarter—more critically sophisticated—than was previously the case." * Los Angeles Review of Books *"This thought-provoking book investigates four interrelated critical axioms that Margreta de Grazia regards as having set the direction of Shakespeare scholarship and criticism since the late eighteenth century." * Modern Philology *"Bold, exciting and illuminating: as energizing as any of {de Grazia's] work. . . . de Grazia picks apart our foundational assumptions about the constituted parameters of Shakespeare studies." * Shakespeare Studies *"The eloquent and lucid analysis in this volume will be of interest to Shakespeare scholars of all stripes. Each essay stands on its own but also connects thematically with the work as a whole, and its arguments are intelligent and learned. Readers familiar with de Grazia's oeuvre will recognize overlaps with themes covered in her earlier work . . . but the questions and concerns here are developed in a new and characteristically sophisticated fashion. Four Shakespearean Period Pieces invites us to sit with the moments in which time in and around Shakespeare feel out of joint, and to think through what these moments might mean for our own practices as literary scholars. In this sense, this work could not be more timely." * Renaissance Quarterly *“Perhaps de Grazia’s most accessible book to date… A brilliant bit of writing with important implications for the practices at the core of Shakespeare studies.” * Come to the Pedlar *“The originality and importance of Four Shakespearean Period Pieces excites my enormous interest and admiration. Teasing out the origin and intention of terms that have been central to discussions of Shakespeare, de Grazia discloses a tangle of problems, misleading assumptions, blind confidence, and distortion. An exercise of scholarly demolition, at once relentless, resourceful, and cunning, this book will shake the grand house of literary criticism.” -- Stephen Greenblatt, Harvard University“Four Shakespearean Period Pieces is wonderful. Lucid, original, learned, and readable, it forms a pendant to de Grazia’s foundational work. She returns to the penetratingly smart intellectual and disciplinary history that she has made her own, surveying centuries of scholarship with powerful clarity. The scholarship is deep, authoritative, and approachable, moving from Augustine to Heidegger with brilliant accessibility. Her critical readings are revelatory, zinging with insight and larger intellectual context, and reverberating with ongoing challenges for humanistic scholarship in our own times.” -- Emma Smith, University of Oxford

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Book SynopsisIn the study of Shakespeare since the eighteenth century, four key concepts have served to situate Shakespeare in history: chronology, periodization, secularization, and anachronism. Yet recent theoretical work has called for their reappraisal. Anachronisms, previously condemned as errors in the order of time, are being hailed as alternatives to that order. Conversely chronology and periods, its mainstays, are now charged with having distorted the past they have been entrusted to represent, and secularization, once considered the driving force of the modern era, no longer holds sway over the past or the present. In light of this reappraisal, can Shakespeare studies continue unshaken? This is the question Four Shakespearean Period Pieces takes up, devoting a chapter to each term: on the rise of anachronism, the chronologizing of the canon, the staging of plays in period, and the use of Shakespeare in modernity's secularizing project. To read these chapters is to come away newlyTrade Review"There is a great deal to appreciate and to enjoy in this theory-rich book, which moves as freely as a willful anachronism through material across its four central essays. . . . de Grazia’s work in particular offers so much of promise to scholars as well as lay readers of Shakespeare that it practically ensures that the next generation of Shakespeareans will have plenty in the way of bardological thinking to do.” * Times Literary Supplement *"One takes one’s leave of Four Shakespearean Period Pieces, as I have now done twice, with the feeling of being smarter—more critically sophisticated—than was previously the case." * Los Angeles Review of Books *"This thought-provoking book investigates four interrelated critical axioms that Margreta de Grazia regards as having set the direction of Shakespeare scholarship and criticism since the late eighteenth century." * Modern Philology *"Bold, exciting and illuminating: as energizing as any of {de Grazia's] work. . . . de Grazia picks apart our foundational assumptions about the constituted parameters of Shakespeare studies." * Shakespeare Studies *"The eloquent and lucid analysis in this volume will be of interest to Shakespeare scholars of all stripes. Each essay stands on its own but also connects thematically with the work as a whole, and its arguments are intelligent and learned. Readers familiar with de Grazia's oeuvre will recognize overlaps with themes covered in her earlier work . . . but the questions and concerns here are developed in a new and characteristically sophisticated fashion. Four Shakespearean Period Pieces invites us to sit with the moments in which time in and around Shakespeare feel out of joint, and to think through what these moments might mean for our own practices as literary scholars. In this sense, this work could not be more timely." * Renaissance Quarterly *“Perhaps de Grazia’s most accessible book to date… A brilliant bit of writing with important implications for the practices at the core of Shakespeare studies.” * Come to the Pedlar *“The originality and importance of Four Shakespearean Period Pieces excites my enormous interest and admiration. Teasing out the origin and intention of terms that have been central to discussions of Shakespeare, de Grazia discloses a tangle of problems, misleading assumptions, blind confidence, and distortion. An exercise of scholarly demolition, at once relentless, resourceful, and cunning, this book will shake the grand house of literary criticism.” -- Stephen Greenblatt, Harvard University“Four Shakespearean Period Pieces is wonderful. Lucid, original, learned, and readable, it forms a pendant to de Grazia’s foundational work. She returns to the penetratingly smart intellectual and disciplinary history that she has made her own, surveying centuries of scholarship with powerful clarity. The scholarship is deep, authoritative, and approachable, moving from Augustine to Heidegger with brilliant accessibility. Her critical readings are revelatory, zinging with insight and larger intellectual context, and reverberating with ongoing challenges for humanistic scholarship in our own times.” -- Emma Smith, University of Oxford

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Book SynopsisPadrón reveals the evolution of Spain's imagining of the New World as a space in continuity with Asia. Narratives of Europe's westward expansion often tell of how the Americas came to be known as a distinct landmass, separate from Asia and uniquely positioned as new ground ripe for transatlantic colonialism. But this geographic vision of the Americas was not shared by all Europeans. While some imperialists imagined North and Central America as undiscovered land, the Spanish pushed to define the New World as part of a larger and eminently flexible geography that they called las Indias, and that by right, belonged to the Crown of Castile and León. Las Indias included all of the New World as well as East and Southeast Asia, although Spain's understanding of the relationship between the two areas changed as the realities of the Pacific Rim came into sharper focus. At first, the Spanish insisted that North and Central America were an extension of the continent of Asia. Eventually, they cTrade Review"It should be essential reading for anyone seeking a fresh approach to understanding Spain’s imperial ambitions during the Age of Discovery." * The Portolan *"Columbus thought that Cuba was an appendage of Asia, and, though it may surprise readers, it would be more than a century before more accurate accounts of the Pacific Ocean and the distinctions between the landforms of Asia and North America emerged. Padrón relays this story with comprehensive knowledge and a skillful interpretation of cartographic and narrative sources, which often rationalized Spanish imperial aims to show that the Spanish Empire had Asian components thanks to the world-encompassing meridian line that divided Spanish and Portuguese zones for exploitation. . . . This highly recommended book clarifies the history of seemingly naïve but at times politically useful sets of flawed assumptions." * CHOICE *"This is a salutary book. . . . it is immensely valuable in making us see how sixteenth-century Spaniards conceptually framed the Americas, the Pacific and beyond; it literally takes us into another world." * The Globe: Journal of the Australian and New Zealand Map Society *"Historian Ricardo Padrón’s The Indies of the Setting Sun: How Early Modern Spain Mapped the Far East as the Transpacific West attempts to understand how, in discursive and visual terms, the Spanish crown sought to project its geopolitical and historical influence in the world from the sixteenth century forward. . . . The book is a valuable contribution not only because of its rigorous and intelligent interpretations, but also because it invites us to think about two major issues. First, it shows that territories such as the Americas were not 'invented' once and for all but were revised and reinvented over time and from different places and communities. Second, the book reminds us that we must decenter our gaze from the battles of conquest and pay attention instead to the voyages and ways of understanding vast spaces such as the oceans that were key in politically configuring our modern experience of the globe." * Terrae Incognitae *"In The Indies of the Setting Sun, Ricardo Padrón explores the spatial imaginaries of elite Spaniards in the period bookended by Balboa’s “discovery” of the Pacific Ocean in 1513 in present- day Panama and the 1606 Spanish conquest of the Moluccas. " * Early American Literature *"With this work, Padrón demonstrates that the Pacific has been a fundamental issue in the invention of America, a process that, as he firmly asserts, 'has been repeatedly revised and reinvented over the course of the years, and has meant different things at different times in different discursive communities.' Padrón encourages readers to view the geopolitical imagination of Habsburg Spain in a different light and to rethink the possibilities offered by new approaches to consider the Pacific not as marginal, but as a central location of the Spanish empire." * Bulletin of the Comediantes *"The Indies of the Setting Sun is an original and thoughtful study of the ‘invention’ and subsequent reinventions of the Pacific Ocean as part of the Spanish empire. Padrón brings to this project the same lucid, elegant prose and methodology that characterized his earlier monograph, and again he provides an argument supported by a careful study of sources employing the best historical approaches, closely contextualized reading, and an expansive definition of cartography. This is a much needed intervention, highlighting the importance of Spanish Asia in the history of Spanish imperial expansion." -- María M. Portuondo, author of The Spanish Disquiet: The Biblical Natural Philosophy of Benito Arias Montano"The Indies of the Setting Sun examines the way that Spanish knowledge about the South Sea—now known as the Pacific Ocean—was developed. Challenging the historical idea that Magellan's circumnavigation had established Europeans' understanding of the Americas as divided from Asia by the vast Pacific, Padrón reveals an 'alternative European cartography' that persisted across the sixteenth century. In this odd parallel universe, America was merely the forecourt to Asia, and the South Sea was a small basin within the larger Indies, then Spain's overseas empire. This is the first book I've ever read that colors the larger 'Indies' so vividly." -- Barbara Mundy, author of The Death of Aztec Tenochtitlan, the Life of Mexico City"The author’s aim. . . is ambitious but the reader will not be disappointed. Padrón, in fact, leads his audience on a real journey through time, dismantling many commonplaces and prejudices about the modern perception of the way the world has been thought of and represented on maps at the dawn of modernity. The author breaks the patterns in the way we think about historical cartography between rigid categories of ‘right and wrong’, ‘precise and approximate’. Instead, Padrón highlights a complex historical process in which different cultural and political theories competed with each other in a dialectic that shaped our way of understanding geography. . . . Ricardo Padrón’s book: The Indies of the Setting Sun should be welcomed as a useful and much needed book. . . . I believe that today, in an era of redefinition of the balance between global powers with enormous interests in the Pacific area, this book is of great usefulness and relevance." * Rutter Project *"A nuanced reading of Spanish cartographic literature about the Pacific region in the sixteenth century. . . . The book’s central strength is in its analytical acuity, which dredges up tensions, contradictions, ironies and ambivalence from multivalent cartographic and written texts." * Imago Mundi *Table of ContentsList of Figures Introduction 1 The Map behind the Curtain 2 South Sea Dreams 3 Pacific Nightmares 4 Shipwrecked Ambitions 5 Pacific Conquests 6 The Location of China 7 The Kingdom of the Setting Sun 8 The Anxieties of a Paper Empire Conclusion Acknowledgments Notes Works Cited Index

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Book SynopsisThe first critical edition of two musical treatises by an Italian music theorist, mathematician, and physicianTrade Review"Prosdocimo's writings deserve to be better known, not only to music theorists, but to scholars in all of the fields in which he was active. This edition is a valuable contribution to that objective."--Renaissance Quarterly“It is a blessing to find a rich Index verborum in which to look for references to individual terms.”--Plainsong and Medieval Music

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Book SynopsisIn this volume Robert Morrissey explores a millennium's worth of history and myth surrounding Charlemagne (768-814). His plasticity, Morrissey argues, endows Charlemagne with both legitimizing power and subversive potential.Trade Review"... a solid book that can be of use to anyone interested in European, particularly French, history. ... remarkably accessible ...." -- History: Reviews of New Books, Fall 2003, Vol. 32 No. 1"... a rich and provocative study that shows [Morrissey's] mastery of medieval and modern historiography and literature ..." -- American Historical Review, April 2004

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Book SynopsisThis book describes and analyzes changing attitudes toward religion during three stages of modern European culture: the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and the Romantic period.Trade Review“This beautifully crafted essay by Louis Dupré makes an original contribution to our understanding of the emergence and development of modernity, which dispensing with religion as a governing discourse and form of life, nonetheless attempts to find a place for it in a world sufficiently depleted of meaning and value as to require reenchantment. It supplements Dupré’s two magisterial texts on the topic of the modernity covering the Renaissance and Enlightenment periods, and whets the appetite for the forthcoming volume on Romanticism. Deep learning is worn lightly in this marvelously readable book.” —Cyril O'Regan, University of Notre Dame“A stunning synthesis of Dupré's magisterial intellectual history of modernity and his distinctive and important philosophy of religion.” —David Tracy, emeritus, The University of Chicago Divinity School“Louis Dupre's literate and sweeping review of the fate of religious faith in modern culture will help contemporary readers, who share his closing yearning for ways in which ‘transcendence can be recognized again,’ to appreciate why many of us find a postmodern climate—for better or worse—more conducive to fulfilling that desire. For his dramatic depictions of modernity teach us how different is the culture in which we now live.” —David Burrell, CSC, Hesburgh Professor Emeritus in Philosophy and Theology, University of Notre Dame“The title of this book, broad as it is, aptly describes it. As the author puts it, for over a millenium Western culture was the culture of Christianity. But gradually, beginning in the Middle Ages, culture and religion ‘assumed a certain independence vis-a-vis each other’ and with the Enlightenment this turned to opposition. In the lectures which constitute this book, the author traces this development.” —Catholic Library World“This wonderful little book, drawn from Louis Dupré’s 2005–2006 Erasmus Lectures at the University of Notre Dame, narrates the development of modern culture from its roots in early Christian encounters with Aristotelianism, through the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the rise of modern atheism, and on to the poetry, philosophy, and theology of the German Romantics. . . . Dupré argues that the weakening of the ‘Christian synthesis’—and the subsequent decline of religion into subsidiary roles in public and academic life—began with a series of intellectual shifts that can be traced to Christianity’s earliest days.” —Commonweal“This book, based on the Erasmus lectures [Dupré] delivered at the University of Notre Dame in 2005, describes and analyzes changing attitudes towards religion during three stages of modern European culture: the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and the Romantic Period.” —Theology Digest“The writing is measured, lucid and graceful, and the breadth of scholarship and the easy and comprehensive familiarity of the author with his material is inspiring. Dupré here distills key themes in his thinking on religion, modernity and culture into a single slim volume, making this a useful introduction to his writings at a modest price.” —Theology“Dupré’s splendid new book traces the unraveling of the ontotheological synthesis of medieval Christendom through the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and German Romanticism. . . . With magisterial lucidity Dupré explores the fragmentation of the medieval symbolic world culminating in the apotheosis of the self-constituting subject.” —Theological Studies“Louis Dupré’s reflections on the development of history towards modernity are a model of careful scholarship and insight. His short book is a distillation and refinement of many years of careful research and serious writing on questions of the philosophy of religion and cultural history. . . . Dupré gives us a comprehensive, serene, and learned discussion of a variety of themes which can only deepen and enrich our understanding of the large complex of questions connected with the themes of modernity, culture, and religion.” —The Thomist“His focus is on the German Romantic poets and playwrights (Goethe, Schiller and Holderlin), the German Idealist Schelling with the linkage of Greek mythology and biblical revelation in his late period, and the emphasis on feeling and individual subjectivity in the theology of Schleiermacher and the philosophy of Kierkegaard.” —HorizonsTable of ContentsForeword by Peter Casarella 1. Philosophy and Faith Part 1. Farewell to a Symbolic World 2. The Modern Idea of Culture and Its Opposition to Its Classical and Medieval Origins 3. The Fragmentation of the Symbolic World 4. The Sources of Modern Atheism Part 2. Philosophical Reinterpretations of Theology 5. Hegel’s Spirit and the Idea of God as Spirit 6. Philosophical Reflections on the Mystery of Creation 7. Evil and the Limits of Theodicy 8. Intimations of Immortality Part 3. Phenomenology: Philosophy Reopens its Doors to Mystery 9. Phenomenology of Religion: Limits and Possibilities 10. Phenomenology and Religious Truth 11. The Enigma of Religious Art 12. Ritual: The Sacralization of Time Part 4. Mysticism: The Silence of Faith 13. Is a Natural Desire of God Possible? 14. Mysticism and Philosophy 15. Justifying the Mystical Experience

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Book SynopsisThis interesting read explores different marginalized populations in medieval and early modern European society, from prostitutes to writers of satire and reveals how the dominant culture needs its margins.Trade Review“This volume contains six strong and diverse essays, each of which individually contributes to the substantial scholarly literature on medieval and early modern marginality.” —Modern Philology“The essays in this volume take the reader on an intellectual voyage of adventure across space and time in pre-modern Europe, stopping off in Germany, the Low Countries, England, Spain, and France. They lucidly explore those messy, contradictory, and fascinating realms of life and thought (marriage, theology, commerce, gender, sexuality, law) where transgression and convention intersect. Thought-provoking. A must-read.” —Ann Marie Rasmussen, Duke University“This is an excellent collection of essays written and edited by a distinguished group of scholars. Specialists in medieval and Early Modern studies will find much to savour and enjoy here . . . the focus of the essays is not only the underclass identified by Bronislaw Geremek in The Margins of Society in Late Medieval Paris but also relatively privileged people who lived dangerously.” —Parergon“This collection breaks new ground in its attention to the marginalized and rascalous members of medieval and renaissance society. First, it rightly treats as permeable the artificial boundary between ‘medieval’ and ‘renaissance’ cultures, seeing them synoptically rather than independently. Second, it boldly incorporates as contiguous both European and New World cultures, seeing them as related rather than discontinuous. These interdisciplinary essays are first rate.” —Daniel T. Kline, University of Alaska Anchorage“Living Dangerously: On the Margins in Medieval and Early Modern Europe is an engrossing, learned collection of articles by recognized historians and literary scholars. Drawing on legal, archival, and literary evidence, they introduce us to real characters—in both senses—who transgressed boundaries and norms. Whether the lines crossed are social, financial, sexual, or spiritual, we learn that those on the margins are central to our understanding of these eras.” —Marjorie Curry Woods, The University of Texas at Austin“This diversity and interdisciplinary approach is welcome and should be of interest to a wide range of medieval and early modern scholars interested in social history, comparative literature, and the topic of marginality . . . the editors and contributors are to be commended for producing a fascinating and accessible study that moves the topic of marginality beyond the margins of contemporary scholarship and into the center of research on identity, community, law, gender, and sexuality.” —Sixteenth Century Journal“Writings on marginalized groups in medieval and early modern society in and beyond such familiar categories as criminals and gypsies.” —The Chronicle of Higher Education

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Book SynopsisPresents English translations from the works of Michael Psellos, a key philosopher of the Byzantine Empire. This book contains the works that Psellos wrote about his family, including a funeral oration for his mother that features recollections from a childhood spent in Constantinople.Trade Review"This volume presents in translation all the texts that Psellos wrote concerning his family. They present the reader with the most complete picture we have of any non-imperial family by casting light on the life of Byzantine women outside the circle of hagiography and court history. The volume includes a long funeral oration for his mother, a funeral oration for his daughter Styliane, a legal work regarding the engagement of his second, adopted, daughter, a letter to his very young grandson, six letters regarding Psellos's family, and a brief work on the festival of St. Agathê. In Kaldellis's excellent translation, Michael Psellos's times and family come to life.""Michael Psellos was the 'Cicero of Byzantium,' except that his interests were more wide-ranging than those of his Roman predecessor. In addition to being a politician, poet, and writer of letters, speeches, and treatises on philosophy and rhetoric, he was an innovative historian and a practical educator who interested himself in all aspects of learning from mathematics and medicine to theurgy. Hitherto, owing to a lack of translations, only his 'Chronographia' has been at all well known. Anthony Kaldellis has now done a great service in making accessible a collection of texts bearing upon personal familial relationships of which we know so little in Byzantium. His translations read well, are accurate, and reflect Psellos' literary subtlety. His commentaries are scholarly and give vital information for the better understanding of this facet of Byzantine society." —Antony R. Littlewood, University of Western Ontario“In sum, the discussion in Mothers and Sons, Fathers and Daughters is deft and crisp. The arguments are built up confidently and convincingly. Wearing his scholarship lightly, Kaldellis marshals Psellos on family to excellent effect, and offers clear and perceptive ideas. This very satisfying read has what is required to attract a wider readership to Psellos’ prodigious work.” —Journal of Hellenic Studies"Teachers of survey courses in Byzantine society, as well as scholars within the wider orbit of Byzantine studies, will find these translations useful and revealing of a leading author's intellectual sensibility." —Speculum

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Book SynopsisTrade Review“In our scholarly rush to classify early modern thinkers and writers according to religious confessions, we have unwittingly overlooked thinkers who regretted the fragmentation that confessionalism imposed, those who longed for a united Christianity however impractical its realization may have been. Stillman’s argument is fresh, persuasive, and important.” —Susannah Monta, author of Martyrdom and Literature in Early Modern England“Christian Identity, Piety, and Politics in Early Modern England is brilliant. The writing is always distinguished and occasionally more than that. Such a pleasure.” —Roger Kuin, editor of The Correspondence of Sir Philip Sidney“This broad, energetic, important study deserves to be widely assimilated . . . Stillman's book has the potential both to refine future Reformation-era taxonomies, and to show where those taxonomies cannot reach.” —British Catholic History“The most significant engagement with the confessionalization thesis in early modern literary studies to date....an indispensable guide for future work.” —ReformationTable of ContentsPreface Introduction: Peace-Wars on the Continent and in Britain 1. John Harington and the Confessional Beyond 2. Neuters and the Politics of Language in Early Modern Polemic, Or How to Trouble the Confessional Divide 3. Imagining Christendom in Britain. Political Romance in 1589 and Disenchantment 4. Enacting the Politics of Christendom. After the Scottish Mission (1590), James VI and I 5. Poetic Energy and Poetic Economy in the Post-Reformation 6. Examining Constable’s Sonnets, Or the Pleasures of Pious Miscegenation 7. Reading the Critical Conversation about Aemilia Lanyer: Performing Presence in the Confessional Beyond Conclusion

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Book SynopsisTrade Review“Wisdom’s Journey crosses the medieval/early modern divide in an accomplished fashion [and] makes a very convincing case for the importance of recognizing the European context of medieval English devotional literature and culture.” —Annie Sutherland, author of English Psalms in the Middle Ages, 1300–1450“A major contribution to our knowledge of the transmission and transformation of crucial medieval devotional writings in later centuries.” —Alastair Minnis, author of Translations of Authority in Medieval English Literature"Steven Rozenski explores devotional and mystical literature in his focused study of English translations and adaptations of the works of Henry Suso, Catherine of Siena, and Thomas à Kempis, and the common devotional culture manifested in the work of Richard Rolle. Written primarily for scholars in medieval mysticism, Reformation studies, and translation studies, Wisdom's Journey will also appeal to readers interested in medieval studies and English literature more broadly." —Church History"Rozenski is to be commended for his extensive research and refreshing insight into the literary function of these well-known religious texts." —Anglican Theological Review"[T]he most powerful aspect of this book is its insistence on seeing translation itself as an act of creation and meaning-making, rather than regarding a translated text simply as an altered or, worse, reductive form of its source." —The Review of English Studies"Rozenski's fine book fulfills its claim that focusing on 'aurality, gender, and translation across regions and across time periods' provides new insight into many aspects of Late Medieval and Early Modern mysticism." —Church History"Rozenski offers an illuminating account of the long life of Continental devotional theologies translated in Middle and early modern English, one that invites further consideration of other existing Continental translations circulating in medieval England. It also decompartmentalizes insular England from the continent by showing the extent to which continental literature found its way into Middle English devotional treatises through the work of theologically and textually sophisticated translators. Wisdom’s Journey’s departitioning of the medieval from the early modern is also a boon that proves to be extremely productive. Rozenski’s insightful reflections are well supported by his detailed close readings and multiple references to a vast number of secondary sources."—The Journal of Medieval Religious CulturesTable of ContentsIntroduction: Devotional Theology and Devotional Mobility Chapter 1: Devotional Mobility in Fourteenth-Century England and Germany Chapter 2: Henry Suso in England: Rhineland Mysticism and Middle English Literature Chapter 3: Catherine of Siena in Trans-Reformation England: Translations of Female Visionary Chapter 4: Thomas à Kempis and The Imitation of Christ: The Devotion of the Fifteenth- Century Low Countries and the Birth of Confessional Textual Criticism Conclusion: Authorship, Canon, and Popularity

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Book SynopsisA fascinating study of the strategies of cultural survival in the Roman Ghetto, by a leading authority on Italian Jews.Trade Review"This is an illuminating and compelling story, told with insight and subtlety. It is highly recommended for students of religion, history, cultural studies, and a host of other disciplines." * Religious Studies Review *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction: The Jews of Rome and the Rhythms of Roman Jewish Life The Jew in a Traumatized Society What Is in a Name? or, The Matrices of Acculturation Social Reconciliation, from Within and Without Afterword Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisA vivid recreation of how the governors and governed of early seventeenth-century Florence confronted, suffered, and survived a major epidemic of plagueTrade Review“John Henderson's analysis of the context and quality of local government in an early modern Italian city stands out as a major work of historical scholarship”—Anne Hardy, Times Literary SupplementLonglisted for the 2020 Cundill History Prize, sponsored by McGill University Special commendation in the 2021 Social History Society Book Prize“Henderson offers a holistic account of plague in seventeenth-century Florence and reaches important new conclusions about the impact and effectiveness of public health measures. The fine detail of the story makes for a brilliant realisation of devastation, resistance and survival.”—Vanessa Harding, author of The Dead and the Living in Paris and London, 1500-1670“In this vivid account, Henderson brings to life the fearful experiences of Florentines as they prepared, dealt with, and lived through an early modern public health crisis … Essential reading.”—Brian Maxson, author of The Humanist World of Renaissance Florence“With a keen attention to gender, power and social networks, Henderson traces a vivid picture of resilience and survival through the complex interplay of plague and piety.”—Giulia Calvi, author of Histories of a Plague Year“Henderson draws on a striking range of sources to present a human-scale fresco. He shows how townspeople, eager to save their souls as much as their skin, strove to cope and survive each in their own way … Re-sets our understanding of what plague meant at every level of early modern society to those caught up in it.”—Colin Jones, author of The Medical World of Early Modern France

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Book SynopsisTrade Review“[I]lluminates afresh two of the most popular plays of Shakespeare’s own time. . . . Lake’s approach is primarily historical, but his admirable close reading engages thoroughly with literary contexts.”—Paul Edmondson, Church Times“Taking Hamlet’s Choice together with How Shakespeare Put Politics on Stage, Peter Lake has established himself as one of the principal voices of the historical contextualization of Shakespeare.”—Stephen Greenblatt“Compelling. . . . A strikingly fresh and rich account of what religion and resistance meant in Elizabethan England, Hamlet’s Choice is required reading for historians, theologians and Shakespeareans.”—Tiffany Stern, general editor of the fourth series of Arden Shakespeare“The depth of Peter Lake’s historical research shows just how these plays’ urgent questions kept the audience on the edges of their seats.”—David Norbrook, author of Poetry and Politics in the English Renaissance“With great deftness, Lake startlingly and compellingly connects the worlds of stage revenge, religious conversion and political allegiance. To read Hamlet’s Choice is as clarifying and cathartic as a great performance of a revenge play itself.”—Nigel Smith, author of Andrew Marvell: The Chameleon

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Book SynopsisHow Cyriacus of Ancona—merchant, spy, and amateur classicist—traveled the world, fighting to save ancient monuments for posterity.

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Book SynopsisTrade Review“Music of the Renaissance is a fascinating discourse on the cultural and aesthetic relationships that characterize musical thought and practice from roughly the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries. …It is a brilliant piece of work that packs a world of information into a relatively slim volume. Highly recommended.” * Journal of the Anglican Association of Musicians *"The vast scope of the study and the short length of the book mean that we are presented with various tantalizing snapshots of a rich musical culture that connects more broadly with the liberal arts." * European History Quarterly *"Unlike traditional histories of music IN the Renaissance, this stud of music OF the Renaissance eschews the detailed and comprehensive examination of the oeuvres of individual composers, the development of different genres and the identification of musical styles in favour of attempting to understand how musical production and practice "fits" or meshes with general artistic expression and tendencies of the period. . . . Music of the Renaissance is highly recommended reading for anyone with an interest in cultural creativity and activity in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries." * Revue de Musicologie *Table of ContentsForeword by Christopher Reynolds Preface Chapter 1 • The Era and Its Terms Chapter 2 • Social Reality and Cultural Interaction Chapter 3 • Text and Texts Chapter 4 • Forms of Perception Chapter 5 • Memoria Glossary Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisElizabeth I came to the throne at a time of insecurity and unrest. Rivals threatened her reign; England was a Protestant island, isolated in a sea of Catholic countries. Spain plotted an invasion, but Elizabeth''s Secretary, Francis Walsingham, was prepared to do whatever it took to protect her.He ran a network of agents in England and Europe who provided him with information about invasions or assassination plots. He recruited likely young men and ''turned'' others. He encourage Elizabeth to make war against the Catholic Irish rebels, with extreme brutality and oversaw the execution of Mary Queen of Scots.The Queen''s Agent is a story of secret agents, cryptic codes and ingenious plots, set in a turbulent period of England''s history. It is also the story of a man devoted to his queen, sacrificing his every waking hour to save the threatened English state.

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Book SynopsisThe hugely acclaimed, best-selling life of Hawkwood, one of the outstanding figures of English and European history. John Hawkwood was an Essex man who became the greatest mercenary in an age when soldiers of fortune flourished - an age that also witnessed the first stirrings of the Renaissance. When England made a peace treaty with the French in 1360, during a pause in the Hundred Years War, John Hawkwood, instead of going home, travelled south to Avignon, where the papacy was based during its exile from Rome. He and his fellow mercenaries held the pope to ransom and were paid off. Hawkwood then crossed the Alps into Italy and found himself in a promised land: he made and lost fortunes extorting money from city states like Florence, Siena, and Milan, who were fighting vicious wars between themselves and against the popes. This man of war husbanded his use of violence, but for all his caution he committed one of the most notorious massacres of his time - an atrocity Trade Review"'Superb and quite unputdownable... Addictively readable, handsomely produced and compellingly intelligent' Miranda Seymour, Sunday Times"

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Book SynopsisIsabella de'' Medici was the hostess of a glittering circle in Renaissance Florence. Beautiful and liberated, she not only matched the intellectual accomplishments of her male contemporaries, but sought sexual parity also, engaging in an adulterous affair with her husband''s cousin. It was this affair - and her very success as First Lady of Florence - that led to her death at the hands of her husband at the age of just thirty-four. She left behind a remarkable story, and as her legacy a son who became the best of the Orsini Dukes, immortalised by Shakespeare as Duke Orsino in Twelfth Night. Caroline P. Murphy illuminates this often misunderstood figure, and in the process brings to life the home of creativity, the city of Florence itself.

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Book SynopsisWOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION FINALIST • REESE’S BOOK CLUB PICK • NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • The author of award-winning Hamnet brings the world of Renaissance Italy to jewel-bright life in this unforgettable fictional portrait of the captivating young duchess Lucrezia de' Medici as she makes her way in a troubled court.“I could not stop reading this incredible true story.” —Reese Witherspoon (Reese’s Book Club Pick)O’Farrell pulls out little threads of historical detail to weave this story of a precocious girl sensitive to the contradictions of her station...You may know the history, and you may think you know what’s coming, but don’t be so sure. —The Washington PostFlorence, the 1550s. Lucrezia, third daughter of the grand duke, is comfortable with her obscure place in the palazzo: free to wonder at its treasures, observ

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Book SynopsisWOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION FINALIST • REESE’S BOOK CLUB PICK • NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • The author of award-winning Hamnet brings the world of Renaissance Italy to jewel-bright life in this unforgettable fictional portrait of the captivating young duchess Lucrezia de' Medici as she makes her way in a troubled court.“I could not stop reading this incredible true story.” —Reese Witherspoon (Reese’s Book Club Pick)O’Farrell pulls out little threads of historical detail to weave this story of a precocious girl sensitive to the contradictions of her station...You may know the history, and you may think you know what’s coming, but don’t be so sure. —The Washington PostFlorence, the 1550s. Lucrezia, third daughter of the grand duke, is comfortable with her obscure place in the palazzo: free to wonder at its treasures, observ

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Book SynopsisWhen Europeans came to the American continent in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, they were confronted with what they perceived as sacrificial practices. Sacrifice and Conversion in the Early Modern Atlantic World examines the encounter between European and American conceptions of sacrifice expressed in texts, music, rituals, and images.

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Book SynopsisThe sense of reading as an intimate act of self-discovery—and of communion between authors and book lovers—has a long history. Lina Bolzoni returns to Petrarch, Boccaccio, Machiavelli, Montaigne, and Tasso, exploring how Renaissance humanists began to represent reading as a private encounter and a dialogue across barriers of time and space.Trade ReviewA Marvelous Solitude is a marvelous book: erudite, accessible, elegant. Bolzoni focuses on the intricate web of myths and metaphors that early modern thinkers spun around the activity of reading, yet there is much here that still whispers to our experience as readers today. -- Virginia Cox, author of The Prodigious MuseThis stimulating book offers a vivid survey of illustrious readers from Petrarch to Proust, woven in a dazzling verbal and visual tapestry that will delight the mind and eye of contemporaries still dwelling in the Gutenberg Galaxy. -- David Marsh, author of Giannozzo Manetti: The Life of a Florentine HumanistLina Bolzoni’s magisterial book is about reading, but it’s also about writers presenting themselves as readers who converse with the past, other texts, and other worlds through books—and then write their way out of these ‘theaters of reading.’ How many readers emerged as writers from the crucible of these reflections? How many more will by reading this book? -- Alexander Nagel, author of The Controversy of Renaissance ArtLina Bolzoni’s love affair with books is palpable in these pages dedicated to a remarkable cohort of writers and readers from Petrarch to Proust. Books in early modernity took on lives of their own, as readers saw in them opportunities for dialogue with the absent and the dead—and were often inspired to add to the conversation themselves. Bolzoni demonstrates that the marvelous—if occasionally risky—thing about the solitude of reading is that it’s never solitary, but full of friends. -- Jane Tylus, author of Reclaiming Catherine of Siena

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Book SynopsisFrancesco Petrarca (13041374), one of the greatest of Italian poets, was also the leading spirit in the Renaissance movement to revive the cultural and moral excellence of ancient Greece and Rome. This two-volume set contains an ample, representative sample from his enormous and fascinating correspondence with all the leading figures of his day.

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Book SynopsisAldus Manutius (c. 1451–1515) was the most important scholarly publisher of the Renaissance. His Aldine Press was responsible for more first editions of classical literature, philosophy, and science than any other publisher before or since. This volume presents Aldus’s prefaces to Latin classics and modern humanist writers, translated into English.Trade ReviewThis priceless I Tatti volume collects and translates into English, many for the first time (although with the I Tatti Library, that almost goes without saying), the prefaces Manutius wrote for the volumes that came off his presses, the allurements intended for potential customers, the introductions to often complex subject matters, and, delightfully, some of that extensive correspondence, which lays bare both the artful flattery that comes with the territory when doing business in Venice and the knowingly public confidentiality in which every arriviste revels when they find themselves hob-nobbing with household names…Humanism and the Latin Classics makes the perfect bookend with the earlier Aldus Manutius volume The Greek Classics, and taken together or separately, they bring to the reader the whirring and clacking of the printer’s shop, the wheeling and wheedling of the time’s book industry, and most of all the burbling and rumorous and striving intellectual atmosphere of the Renaissance in its full flower, when books and learning and reading and writing seemed to awake from centuries of slumber and begin ferociously multiplying again in every town and city and seat of learning from London to Baghdad. Aldine books were everywhere during that explosion, carried in pockets, bought and traded, discussed by all, and these I Tatti volumes take readers inside the tornado and introduce them to the man in the eye of it all. -- Steve Donoghue * Open Letters Monthly *

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Book SynopsisExamines the scripting and performance of festivals in Spain between 1327 and 1620, offering a look at the different types of festivals that were held in Iberia during this crucial period of European history. This book focuses on the travels and festivities of Philip II, exploring the complex relationship between power and ceremony.Trade ReviewOne of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles for 2012 "Accomplished historian Ruiz examines festivals in Spain from approximately 1200 to the mid-17th century. Starting from the premise that these events conveyed social, political, and ideological content, the author argues effectively that a close analysis over time of various festivals and related traditions--e.g., those associated with royal entries and visits to major municipalities; royal births, weddings, and funerals; Corpus Christi and Carnival--improves historians' understanding of changes in political processes and culture... The book provides information and insight that anthropologists, students of Spanish literature, and historians of Spain and colonial Spanish America will draw upon for many years."--Choice "[O]ne may recommend the present study as a labour of love--a detailed and interesting introduction to that colourful world of chivalry which, as he confesses, has captivated the author since his youth."--James Casey, European History Quarterly "Ruiz is ... a master storyteller. The chroniclers who originally recounted these festivities and processions in loving detail intended to recreate for their readers a complete vision of the clothing, music, food, decorative arches, dances, and jousts that constituted them, and Ruiz has done the same service for us."--Jodi Campbell, English Historical Review "This study brings to the forefront the Iberian Peninsula, a geographical area usually neglected in the studies of these celebrations, while it informs, enlightens, and entertains. A great read."--Candelas Gala, European LegacyTable of ContentsPreface ix Abbreviations xiii Chapter I: Festivals in Late Medieval and Early Modern Spain: An Introduction 1 Chapter II: The Meaning of Festivals: A Typology 34 Chapter III: Royal Entries, Princely Visits, Triumphal Celebrations in Spain, c. 1327-1640 68 Chapter IV: The Structure of the Late Medieval and Early Modern Royal Entry: Change and Continuity 113 Chapter V: A King Goes Traveling: Philip II in the Crown of Aragon, 1585-86 and 1592 146 Chapter VI: Martial Festivals and the Chivalrous Imaginary 193 Chapter VII: Kings and Knights at Play in Late Medieval and Early Modern Spain 210 Chapter VIII: From Carnival to Corpus Christi 246 Chapter IX: Noncalendrical Festivals: Life Cycles and Power 293 Conclusion 331 Appendix: The Feasts of May 1428 at Valladolid 335 Bibliography 339 Index 345

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Book SynopsisExamines the scripting and performance of festivals in Spain between 1327 and 1620, offering a look at the different types of festivals that were held in Iberia during this crucial period of European history. This book focuses on the travels and festivities of Philip II, exploring the relationship between power and ceremony.Trade ReviewOne of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles for 2012 "Accomplished historian Ruiz examines festivals in Spain from approximately 1200 to the mid-17th century. Starting from the premise that these events conveyed social, political, and ideological content, the author argues effectively that a close analysis over time of various festivals and related traditions--e.g., those associated with royal entries and visits to major municipalities; royal births, weddings, and funerals; Corpus Christi and Carnival--improves historians' understanding of changes in political processes and culture... The book provides information and insight that anthropologists, students of Spanish literature, and historians of Spain and colonial Spanish America will draw upon for many years."--Choice "[O]ne may recommend the present study as a labour of love--a detailed and interesting introduction to that colourful world of chivalry which, as he confesses, has captivated the author since his youth."--James Casey, European History Quarterly "Ruiz is ... a master storyteller. The chroniclers who originally recounted these festivities and processions in loving detail intended to recreate for their readers a complete vision of the clothing, music, food, decorative arches, dances, and jousts that constituted them, and Ruiz has done the same service for us."--Jodi Campbell, English Historical Review "This study brings to the forefront the Iberian Peninsula, a geographical area usually neglected in the studies of these celebrations, while it informs, enlightens, and entertains. A great read."--Candelas Gala, European LegacyTable of ContentsPreface ix Abbreviations xiii Chapter I: Festivals in Late Medieval and Early Modern Spain: An Introduction 1 Chapter II: The Meaning of Festivals: A Typology 34 Chapter III: Royal Entries, Princely Visits, Triumphal Celebrations in Spain, c. 1327-1640 68 Chapter IV: The Structure of the Late Medieval and Early Modern Royal Entry: Change and Continuity 113 Chapter V: A King Goes Traveling: Philip II in the Crown of Aragon, 1585-86 and 1592 146 Chapter VI: Martial Festivals and the Chivalrous Imaginary 193 Chapter VII: Kings and Knights at Play in Late Medieval and Early Modern Spain 210 Chapter VIII: From Carnival to Corpus Christi 246 Chapter IX: Noncalendrical Festivals: Life Cycles and Power 293 Conclusion 331 Appendix: The Feasts of May 1428 at Valladolid 335 Bibliography 339 Index 345

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"A handsome new book by art and architecture historian Cammy Brothers, Giuliano da Sangallo and the Ruins of Rome helps to unravel the riddle of where Bramante got his knowledge of ancient building, and her history is a bold revision of the standard accounts. . . . This book is truly a brilliant, unprecedented scholarly achievement that should place her in the front rank of architectural historians working today."---Mark Alan Hewitt, Common Edge"Engagingly written and richly illustrated study of Giuliano da Sangallo. . . . Brothers’s study is a welcome intervention that reminds us that. . . . [Sangallo] was integral to how the next generations . . . produced their own vision of antiquity that informed urban renewal in the baroque Eternal City and beyond."---Robert John Clines, Renaissance Studies"[A] beautifully illustrated analysis of Sangallo's work." * Choice *"A very important and welcome contribution to architectural and art histories of the Italian Renaissance, to studies of Rome, and to the history of the book. It is synthetic and highly innovative, like Giuliano himself."---Mirka Benes, Renaissance and Reformation"A refreshingly original contribution to the field."---David Hemsoll, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians"An impressive, comprehensive presentation and an eye-opening reading of the marvelous drawings, contextualized in a rich and intelligent discussion of their position within the architectural practice of Giuliano da Sangallo and the architectural theory of his time."---Maia Fabricius Hansen, Renaissance Quarterly

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Suthor invigorates this subject in myriad ways, not least by the sheer verve of her writing and the ambition of her project. The book is itself a bravura performance, galloping through several centuries of European art history with considerable wit and erudition."---Alexander Marr, Apollo Magazine"[A] pioneering book. . . . this brilliant and well-illustrated book confirms that bravura was one of the most cognitively demanding techniques of Renaissance painting. The brilliance of Suthor’s analysis lies in her fresh terminology and perceptive language of description of even the smallest and most easily overlooked details of composition, and in her critical ability to relate such intricacies to larger issues taken up in paintings and in criticism. She writes in engaging, precise language, and makes persuasive connections with contemporary art criticism and modern aesthetics and cultural theory."---Goran Stanivukovic, Renaissance and Reformation"Bravura surveys the breadth of meaning that bravura conveys, probing the subtleties of the concept from multiple viewpoints. . . . This breadth, which makes it possible to see patterns and similarities over centuries and national boundaries, is refreshing in our age of narrowly defined specialist studies and helps us see the consistency over longer periods in European art, something that is often lost in our focus on differences. . . . [Suthor’s] skill at integrating theory and practice is commendable and provides a service to the theorists and biographers who were artists themselves, reminding those who would study paintings in isolation from the ideas valued by their makers that they do so at serious peril."---Janis Bell, Renaissance Quarterly

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Fascinating."---David Lorimer, Paradigm Explorer"A book of great depth and insightfulness, Knowledge Lost is a must read for anyone interested in the Enlightenment."---Dr. Cliff Cunningham, Sun News Austin

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"The Hungry Eye is a food-obsessed frolic through the artwork, writing, and philosophy of hundreds of years of Western history. . . . From the fruits that adorn Renaissance portraits of the Madonna and Child to the platter that carries St. John the Baptist’s head, Barkan parses the past with gusto."---Hyperallergic, Lauren Moya Ford"A foundational text of Food Studies. . . . This book does for food in art and literature what Sidney Mintz did for food and global politics in Sweetness and Power. It should be right up there with Mintz’s book as a foundational text of Food Studies. . . . Everyone interested in Food Studies as a discipline, food in art, and anything having to do with food and culture will want to read this book—for its ideas, its gorgeousness, and for sheer pleasure."---Marion Nestle, Food Politics"It's unusual to have a culinary history that is also highly recommended for arts holdings; but The Hungry Eye is a feast of mind and eye that holds much food for thought for scholarly audiences interested in a different approach to food and drink's importance in human affairs." * Donovan’s Literary Services *"Leonard Barkan has written a terrific book that ranges far more widely than one might expect, is impressively learned, and yet is remarkably accessible and often entertaining. . . . One closes the book convinced of the centrality of food and drink in European culture. This is a fine addition to the literature on the history of food that adds depth to the largely narrative histories that have preceded it."---Rod Phillips, The World of Fine Wine"Sumptuous, eminently absorbing, delectably erudite and cornucopian. . . . [The Hungry Eye] is a beautifully personal, resonantly learned, beguilingly written chronicle of how food, throughout the centuries, has brought the via contemplativa and the via activa together. . . . A feast for the eyes and for the mind."---Mika Provata-Carlone, Bookanista"In a beautifully written and illustrated book, [Barkan] has explored how what is eaten and imbibed —literally and figuratively –portray, shape and explain how Western culture from Rome through the Renaissance. . . . The result is a delicious rich broth filled with depth and nuance that will satisfy the learned reader and urge her or him to ask for more."---Richard Zimmer, Food Anthropology

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"A Choice Outstanding Academic Title of the Year""[Pastoureau] traces the use and significance of the color from the walls of the Lascaux caves and liturgical robes to medieval chess boards and heraldry, to engraving and photography, and the work of the Impressionist painters and contemporary designers. . . . Thorough research and abundant illustrations." * Library Journal *"A rich and encyclopedic exploration of the manifold ways in which Westerners have conceptualized the color white."---Jesse Russell, New Criterion"The book is full of fascination and is as abundant in unusual images as in revealing facts."---Michael Prodger, New Statesman"Magisterial. . . .The book is full of striking contextualised images from antiquity to the present day, so readers gain vivid impressions of the role of white and its symbolism. The series is an extraordinary achievement." * Paradigm Explorer *"The book is a good introductory resource on the significance and symbolism of the color white in Western European culture. Pastoureau's volume is a valuable addition to his introduction to the history of color in the West." * Choice *

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"A History Today Book of the Year""[An] excellent new study."---Andrew Hadfield, Times Literary Supplement"A fascinating window onto Tudor life at its best, worst and most complicated."---Noel Malcolm, Daily Telegraph"Thoroughly enjoyable and enlightening."---Dominic Green, Wall Street Journal"Andersson profiles in this diligent study 16th-century court jester William Somer, Henry VIII’s favored ‘fool.’ . . . The result is an illuminating look into Somer’s role as a source of broad humor and stress relief in a tumultuous court ruled by a mercurial king." * Publishers Weekly *"Andersson has given us a vivid, tantalising portrait of [Will Somer] and a nuanced exploration of how he and those around him negotiated one another. . . .Will Somer’s ghost has life in it yet."---Matthew Lyons, History Today"Anyone who wants to know about this oddly central figure in Tudor life will find Andersson’s book worthwhile."---Alec Ryrie, The Conversation"A fascinating look at Will Somer, Henry VIII’s court fool. . . .A book that makes a great case for looking at history through those who are often disregarded."---Nandini Das, History Today"Even by the end of this biography, you will wonder how much you know about Will Somer, and that is all to the good. . . . [Andersson] provides a therapeutic rebuke to much of the nonsense written about Somer."---Carl Rollyson, New York Sun

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"If one wanted to know just what effect the Renaissance had on medicine, this book would be the place to start. Nancy Siraisi proposes lucidly and elegantly her answer to this important academic puzzle. Her use of Girolamo Cardano's self-revelations makes this the liveliest of works on the famous scholar."—Vivian Nutton, The Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine"Girolamo Cardano was an idiosyncratic man in an idiosyncratic age, and Nancy Siraisi has traced the processes of accommodation between the drive for invention and the reliance on convention so prevalent to Cardano and his century. Her story of Cardano's role in the history of medicine bridges the history of the body, Renaissance occultism, and the emerging science of experimental philosophy and probabilistic knowledge. Siraisi has read Cardano with great intelligence and erudition, and is a sure guide through the paradox and particulars of his age."—Mary J. Voss, Princeton UniversityTable of ContentsPreface and AcknowledgmentsNote to the ReaderAbbreviationsPt. 1Cardano's Medical WorldCh. 1Introduction3Ch. 2Practitioner and Patients24Pt. 2Theory and PracticeCh. 3Argument and Experience43Ch. 4Time, Body, Food: The Parameters of Health70Pt. 3The Old and the NewCh. 5The Uses of Anatomy93Ch. 6The New Hippocrates119Pt. 4Medical WondersCh. 7The Hidden and the Marvelous149Ch. 8The Medicine of Dreams174Pt. 5Medical NarrativesCh. 9Historia, Narrative, and Medicine195Ch. 10The Physician as Patient214Epilogue225Notes231Bibliography329Index353

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Book SynopsisShows the Malleus, a very well known and widely quoted medieval text, to be highly idiosyncratic, and unusual in its ideas, even among the texts of other contemporary witch-theorists -- .Trade ReviewBroedel has provided an excellent study, not only of the Malleus and its authors, but just as importantly, of the intellectual context in which the Malleus must be set and the theological and folk traditions to which it is, in many ways, an heir. Peter Maxwell-Stuart, St Andrews University -- .Table of Contents1. Introduction2. Authors and arguments3. The inquisitors’ Devil4. Misfortune, witchcraft and the will of god5. Witchcraft: The formation of belief, part one -- evidence and interpretation6. Witchcraft: The formation of belief, part two7. Witchcraft as an expression of female sexualityBibliography

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