Beyond Florence
The Contours of Medieval and Early Modern Italy
Published on 10. December 2002
Book
Paperback/Softback
344 pages
978-0-8047-3935-1 (ISBN)
Description
For many years English-language scholarship on late medieval and early modern Italy was largely dominated by work on Florence-as a city, culture, and economic and political entity. During the past few decades, however, scholarship has moved well beyond the "Florentine model" to explore the diversity of Italian urban and provincial life-the "many Italies" that stretched from the Apennines to the Mediterranean. This volume brings together a group of sixteen urban, social, religious, and economic historians of late medieval and early modern Italy whose work reflects this shift, and illustrates some of the significant new research directions of the field.
At the volume's core are questions important to all historians of late medieval and early modern Europe: What does the new work on Italy beyond Florence have to say about the traditional definition of the Renaissance, a definition that made Florence its paradigmatic expression? What new questions about the period in general have emerged as a result of decentering the Renaissance? How has the effort to view Florence in a wider set of Italian and Mediterranean political and economic networks shed new light on the history of city states? And how has this work led to a reexamination of the continuities connecting the late medieval world to the early modern period?
In exploring the contours of Italy from the eleventh through the seventeenth centuries, the volume creates a landscape against which to evaluate the current state of Florentine studies, the resurgence of Venetian studies, the renewed interest in Italy under Spanish rule, and the development of many other regional and local histories that are increasingly used by scholars to facilitate a broader understanding of Italy as a whole.
At the volume's core are questions important to all historians of late medieval and early modern Europe: What does the new work on Italy beyond Florence have to say about the traditional definition of the Renaissance, a definition that made Florence its paradigmatic expression? What new questions about the period in general have emerged as a result of decentering the Renaissance? How has the effort to view Florence in a wider set of Italian and Mediterranean political and economic networks shed new light on the history of city states? And how has this work led to a reexamination of the continuities connecting the late medieval world to the early modern period?
In exploring the contours of Italy from the eleventh through the seventeenth centuries, the volume creates a landscape against which to evaluate the current state of Florentine studies, the resurgence of Venetian studies, the renewed interest in Italy under Spanish rule, and the development of many other regional and local histories that are increasingly used by scholars to facilitate a broader understanding of Italy as a whole.
Reviews / Votes
"The quality of the individual essays is extraordinarily high, representative of the very best work being done in this field. The volume provides a model for the comparative study of Italian culture."-James Hankins, Harvard UniversityMore details
Edition
New edition
Language
English
Place of publication
Palo Alto
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Edition type
New edition
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
7 maps
Dimensions
Height: 232 mm
Width: 156 mm
Thickness: 19 mm
Weight
454 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-8047-3935-1 (9780804739351)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Paula Findlen is Professor of History at Stanford University. She is the author of Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy. Michelle M. Fontaine is Associate Professor of History at the University of Arkansas, Little Rock. Duane J. Osheim is Professor of History at the University of Virginia. He is the author, most recently, of A Tuscan Monastery and Its Social World.
Content
PART ONE. FLORENCE, ITALY, AND THE RENAISSANCE I 1 Florence Redux 5 Gene Brucker 2 In and Out of Florence 13 Paula Findlen PART TWO. CITY AND COUNTRYSIDE 29 3 The Other Florence Within Florence 33 Samuel K. Cohn, Jr. 4 A World of Its Own: Economy, Society, and Religious Life in the Tuscan Mugello at the Time of Dante 45 George Dameron 5 The Country Parish at Late Medieval Lucca 59 Duane J. Osheim 6 "Do Not Say That This Is a Man from Assisi" 72 Robert Brentano PART THREE. LAW AND SOCIETY 8I 7 Concubines, Lovers, Prostitutes: Infamy and Female Identity in Medieval Bologna 8 5 Carol Lansing 8 Lost Faith: A Roman Prosecutor Reflects on Notaries' Crimes IO1 Laurie Nussdorfer PART FOUR. URBAN AND RELIGIOUS IDENTITIES I15 9 Pilgrim-Tourism in Late Medieval Venice I19 Robert C. Davis 10 The Hermit Returns: Sanctity and the City in the March of Ancona 133 Robert L. Cooper 11 In the Shop of the Lord: Bernardino of Siena and Popular Devotion I47 Cynthia L. Polecritti 12 "Angels of Peace": The Social Drama of the Jesuit Mission in Early Modern Southern Italy i60 Jennifer D. Selwyn PART FIVE. TOPOGRAPHIES OF POWER 177 13 Topographies of Power in the Urban Centers of Medieval Italy: Communes, Bishops, and Public Authority 181 Maureen C. Miller 14 In Search of the Quiet City: Civic Identity and Papal State Building in Fourteenth-Century Orvieto I90 David Foote 15 Back to the Future: Remaking the Commune in Ducal Modena 205 Michelle M. Fontaine 16 The Spanish Foundations of Late Renaissance and Baroque Rome 2I9 Thomas Dandelet AFTERWORD Where Is Beyond Florence? 233 Randolph Starn Notes 243 Bibliography 283 Index 3I5