At the Margins
Minority Groups in Premodern Italy
Published on 14. April 2005
Book
Paperback/Softback
304 pages
978-0-8166-3821-5 (ISBN)
Description
Slaves, foundlings, prostitutes, nuns, homosexuals, exiles, the elderly, and mountain communities - such groups stood at the margins of society in premodern Italy. But where precisely the margins were was not so easily determined. Examining these minorities as the buffer zones between more readily recognizable centers, At the Margins explores identity as a process rather than a fixed entity, stressing the multiplicity of groups to which individuals belonged. By tracing the shifting relations of social margins to centers in Italy between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries - and showing how these shifts in turn relate to social order and identity formation - the authors challenge entrenched ideas about the nature of the Renaissance and its role in shaping modernity. Behind much cultural theory lies a critique of the centrality of modernity and its foundations in the discourse of Renaissance humanism. And yet, as this volume reveals, the insights of contemporary cultural theory serve to expose the flaws in this picture of cultural hegemony and, in decentering the Renaissance, return it to the heart of cultural debate.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Minnesota
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 16 mm
Weight
438 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-8166-3821-5 (9780816638215)
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Schweitzer Classification
Person
Stephen J. Milner is senior lecturer in Italian at the University of Bristol.Contributors: Judith Bryce, U of Bristol; Peter Burke, U of Cambridge; Samuel K, Cohn, Jr., U of Glasgow; Derek Duncan, U of Bristol; Steven A. Epstein, U of Kansas; Philip Gavitt, Saint Louis U; Mary Laven, Jesus College; Michael Rocke, Harvard U; Dennis Romano, Syracuse U; Kenneth R. Stow, U of Haifa; Anabel Thomas.
Content
Contents Editor's PrefacePart I: The Centrality of Margins Identity and the Margins of Italian Renaissance CultureStephen J. Milner Margins and Minorities: Contemporary ConcernsDerek Duncan Decentering the Italian Renaissance: The Challenge of PostmodernismPeter Burke Part II: Negotiating Margins The Ambivalence of Policing Sexual Margins: Sodomy and Sodomites in FlorenceMichael Rocke Stigma, Acceptance, and the End to Liminality: Jews and Christians in Early Modern ItalyKenneth R. Stow Cast Out and Shut In: The Experience of Nuns in Counter-Reformation VeniceMary Laven From Putte to Puttane: Female Foundlings and Charitable Institutions in Northern Italy, 1530-1630Philip Gavitt Part III: Marginal Voices Les Livres des Florentines: Reconsidering Women's Literacy in Quattrocento FlorenceJudith Bryce Exile, Rhetoric, and the Limits of Civic Republican DiscourseStephen J. Milner Dominican Marginalia: The Late Fifteenth-Century Printing Press of San Jacopo di Ripoli in FlorenceAnabel Thomas Part IV: Minority Groups Slaves in Italy, 1350-1550Steven A. Epstein The Marginality of Mountaineers in Renaissance FlorenceSamuel K. Cohn Jr. Vecchi, Poveri, e Impotenti: The Elderly in Renaissance VeniceDennis Romano Contributors Index