Download or read book Genealogy of the Pagan Gods written by Giovanni Boccaccio and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2011-05-31 with total page 929 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The goal of Boccaccio’s Genealogy of the Pagan Gods is to plunder ancient and medieval literary sources to create a massive synthesis of Greek and Roman mythology. This is volume 1 of a three-volume set of Boccaccio’s complete 15-book work. It contains a famous defense of the value of studying ancient pagan poetry in a Christian world.
Download or read book Forgotten Healers written by Sharon T. Strocchia and published by I Tatti Studies in Italian Ren. This book was released on 2019 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Renaissance Italy women from all walks of life played a central role in health care and the early development of medical science. Observing that the frontlines of care are often found in the household and other spaces thought of as female, Sharon Strocchia encourages us to rethink women's place in the history of medicine.
Download or read book Cultures of Charity written by Nicholas Terpstra and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2013-02-14 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Renaissance debates about politics and gender led to pioneering forms of poor relief, devised to help women get a start in life. These included orphanages for illegitimate children and forced labor in workhouses, but also women’s shelters and early forms of maternity benefits, unemployment insurance, food stamps, and credit union savings plans.
Download or read book A Convert s Tale written by Tamar Herzig and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2019-12-03 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Salomone da Sesso was a virtuoso goldsmith in Renaissance Italy. Brought down by a sex scandal, he saved his skin by converting to Catholicism. Tamar Herzig explores Salamone’s world—his Jewish upbringing, his craft and patrons, and homosexuality. In his struggle for rehabilitation, we see how precarious and contested was the meaning of conversion.
Download or read book The Return of Lucretius to Renaissance Florence written by Alison Brown and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2010-05-05 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Brown demonstrates how Florentine thinkers used Lucretius—earlier and more widely than has been supposed—to provide a radical critique of prevailing orthodoxies. She enhances our understanding of the “revolution” in sixteenth-century political thinking and our definition of the Renaissance within newly discovered worlds and new social networks.
Download or read book Writing History in Renaissance Italy written by Gary Ianziti and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2012-01-01 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Humanist Educational Treatises written by and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume provides new translations, commissioned for the I Tatti Renaissance Library, of four of the most important theoretical statements that emerged from the early humanists efforts to reform medieval education."
Download or read book A Legacy of Excellence the Story of Villa I Tatti written by William Weaver and published by ABRAMS. This book was released on 1997 with total page 158 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book documents the colorful life the Berensons led at I Tatti, the rich intellectual atmosphere they fostered there, and the spirit that continues and is nurtured by the Harvard Center.
Download or read book The Fruit of Liberty written by Nicholas Scott Baker and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2013-11-04 with total page 383 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the middle decades of the sixteenth century, the republican city-state of Florence--birthplace of the Renaissance--failed. In its place the Medici family created a principality, becoming first dukes of Florence and then grand dukes of Tuscany. The Fruit of Liberty examines how this transition occurred from the perspective of the Florentine patricians who had dominated and controlled the republic. The book analyzes the long, slow social and cultural transformations that predated, accompanied, and facilitated the institutional shift from republic to principality, from citizen to subject. More than a chronological narrative, this analysis covers a wide range of contributing factors to this transition, from attitudes toward officeholding, clothing, the patronage of artists and architects to notions of self, family, and gender. Using a wide variety of sources including private letters, diaries, and art works, Nicholas Baker explores how the language, images, and values of the republic were reconceptualized to aid the shift from citizen to subject. He argues that the creation of Medici principality did not occur by a radical break with the past but with the adoption and adaptation of the political culture of Renaissance republicanism.
Download or read book Ciceronian Controversies written by JoAnn DellaNeva and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The main literary dispute of the Renaissance pitted those Neo-Latin writers favoring Cicero alone as the apotheosis of Latin prose against those following an eclectic array of literary models. This Ciceronian controversy pervades the texts and letters collected for the first time in this volume.
Download or read book Reviving the Eternal City written by Elizabeth McCahill and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2013-10-14 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1420, after more than one hundred years of the Avignon Exile and the Western Schism, the papal court returned to Rome, which had become depopulated, dangerous, and impoverished in the papacy's absence. Reviving the Eternal City examines the culture of Rome and the papal court during the first half of the fifteenth century. As Elizabeth McCahill explains, during these decades Rome and the Curia were caught between conflicting realities--between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, between conciliarism and papalism, between an image of Rome as a restored republic and a dream of the city as a papal capital. Through the testimony of humanists' rhetorical texts and surviving archival materials, McCahill reconstructs the niche that scholars carved for themselves as they penned vivid descriptions of Rome and offered remedies for contemporary social, economic, religious, and political problems. In addition to analyzing the humanists' intellectual and professional program, McCahill investigates the different agendas that popes Martin V (1417-1431) and Eugenius IV (1431-1447) and their cardinals had for the post-Schism pontificate. Reviving the Eternal City illuminates an urban environment in transition and explores the ways in which curialists collaborated and competed to develop Rome's ancient legacy into a potent cultural myth.
Download or read book Printing a Mediterranean World written by Sean Roberts and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2013-02-14 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1482, the Florentine humanist and statesman Francesco Berlinghieri produced the Geographia, a book of over one hundred folio leaves describing the world in Italian verse, inspired by the ancient Greek geography of Ptolemy. The poem, divided into seven books (one for each day of the week the author “travels” the known world), is interleaved with lavishly engraved maps to accompany readers on this journey. Sean Roberts demonstrates that the Geographia represents the moment of transition between printing and manuscript culture, while forming a critical base for the rise of modern cartography. Simultaneously, the use of the Geographia as a diplomatic gift from Florence to the Ottoman Empire tells another story. This exchange expands our understanding of Mediterranean politics, European perceptions of the Ottomans, and Ottoman interest in mapping and print. The envoy to the Sultan represented the aspirations of the Florentine state, which chose not to bestow some other highly valued good, such as the city’s renowned textiles, but instead the best example of what Florentine visual, material, and intellectual culture had to offer.
Download or read book A Great and Wretched City written by Mark Jurdjevic and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2014-03-10 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dispelling the myth that Florentine politics offered only negative lessons, Mark Jurdjevic shows that significant aspects of Machiavelli's political thought were inspired by his native city. Machiavelli's contempt for Florence's shortcomings was a direct function of his considerable estimation of the city's unrealized political potential.
Download or read book Reading Lucretius in the Renaissance written by Ada Palmer and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2014-10-13 with total page 415 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After its rediscovery in 1417, Lucretius’s Epicurean didactic poem De Rerum Natura threatened to supply radicals and atheists with the one weapon unbelief had lacked in the Middle Ages: good answers. Scholars could now challenge Christian patterns of thought by employing the theory of atomistic physics, a sophisticated system that explained natural phenomena without appeal to divine participation, and argued powerfully against the immortality of the soul, the afterlife, and a creator God. Ada Palmer explores how Renaissance readers, such as Machiavelli, Pomponio Leto, and Montaigne, actually ingested and disseminated Lucretius, and the ways in which this process of reading transformed modern thought. She uncovers humanist methods for reconciling Christian and pagan philosophy, and shows how ideas of emergent order and natural selection, so critical to our current thinking, became embedded in Europe’s intellectual landscape before the seventeenth century. This heterodoxy circulated in the premodern world, not on the conspicuous stage of heresy trials and public debates, but in the classrooms, libraries, studies, and bookshops where quiet scholars met the ideas that would soon transform the world. Renaissance readers—poets and philologists rather than scientists—were moved by their love of classical literature to rescue Lucretius and his atomism, thereby injecting his theories back into scientific discourse. Palmer employs a new quantitative method for analyzing marginalia in manuscripts and printed books, exposing how changes in scholarly reading practices over the course of the sixteenth century gradually expanded Europe’s receptivity to radical science, setting the stage for the scientific revolution.
Download or read book In Defense of Common Sense written by Lodi Nauta and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the leading humanists of Quattrocento Italy, Lorenzo Valla (ca. 1406-1457) has been praised as a brilliant debunker of medieval scholastic philosophy. In this book Lodi Nauta seeks a more balanced assessment, presenting us with the first comprehensive analysis of the humanist's attempt at radical reform of Aristotelian scholasticism. This study examines Valla's attack on major tenets of Aristotelian metaphysics, showing how Valla employed common sense and linguistic usage as his guides. It then explicates Valla's critique of Aristotelian psychology and natural philosophy and discusses his moral and religious views, including Valla's notorious identification of Christian beatitude with Epicurean pleasure and his daring views on the Trinity. Finally, it takes up Valla's humanist dialectic, which seeks to transform logic into a practical tool measured by persuasiveness and effectiveness. Nauta firmly places Valla's arguments and ideas within the contexts of ancient and medieval philosophical traditions as well as renewed interest in ancient rhetoric in the Renaissance. He also demonstrates the relevance of Valla's conviction that the philosophical problems of the scholastics are rooted in a misunderstanding of language. Combining philosophical exegesis and historical scholarship, this book offers a new approach to a major Renaissance thinker.
Download or read book The Duke and the Stars written by Monica Azzolini and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2013-02-11 with total page 387 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Duke and the Stars explores science and medicine as studied and practiced in fifteenth-century Italy, including how astrology was taught in relation to astronomy. It illustrates how the “predictive art” of astrology was often a critical, secretive source of information for Italian Renaissance rulers, particularly in times of crisis.
Download or read book Venice s Most Loyal City written by Stephen D. Bowd and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2010-11 with total page 375 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This innovative microhistory of a fascinating yet neglected city shows how its loyalty to Venice was tested by military attack, economic downturn, and demographic collapse. Despite these trials, Brescia experienced cultural revival and political transformation, which Bowd uses to explain state formation in a powerful region of Renaissance Italy.
