The Renaissance in Europe

Front Cover
Laurence King Publishing, 2003 - 368 pages
"The Renaissance is usually portrayed as a period dominated by the extraordinary achievements of great men: rulers, philosophers, poets, painters, architects and scientists. Leading scholar Margaret King recasts the Renaissance as a more complex cultural movement rooted in a unique urban society that was itself the product of many factors and interactions: commerce, papal and imperial ambitions, artistic patronage, scientific discovery, aristocratic and popular violence, legal precedents, peasant migrations, famine, plague, invasion and other social factors. Together with literary and artistic achievements, therefore, today's Renaissance history includes the study of power, wealth, gender, class, honour, shame, ritual and other categories of historical investigation opened up in recent years. Tracing the diffusion of the Renaissance from Italy to the rest of Europe, Professor King marries the best work of the last generation of scholars with the findings of the most recent research, including her own. Ultimately, she points to the multiple ways in which this seminal epoch influenced the later development of Western culture and society."--Jacket.

From inside the book

Contents

FOCUS Monte Cassino
6
VOICES How to Succeed in Business
20
An Age of Republics c 1250c 1350
33
Urban Culture in a Republican Age
47
Suggested Readings and Links
63
VOICES Barbaro and Pico
79
The Sociology of Humanism
93
The Artful Construction of Reality
106
FOCUS The Medici
212
The Crisis and Beyond
225
Castigliones The Courtier
234
Ideas and the Arts in Late Renaissance Italy
242
VOICES Pietro Aretino Scourge of Princes
249
Suggested Readings and Links
255
FOCUS The English Century
264
FOCUS The Enchantments of Nowhere
272

Portraits and Personality
120
Suggested Readings and Links
135
At Home and in the Piazza
137
VOICES Riot Plague and Punishment
148
VOICES The Duties of a Wife
157
Suggested Readings and Links
165
Popular Religion
174
Saints and Martyrs
180
Pastors of the Flock
187
Suggested Readings and Links
193
VOICES A Despots Advice and a Republicans Lament
204
VOICES Luther and Calvin on Liberty and Free Will
279
Suggested Readings and Links
285
FOCUS Early Modern Cities
294
VOICES Spanish Sketches
299
VOICES In Search of Authenticity
311
Suggested Readings and Links
319
New Heavens New Earth
330
VOICES Scientific Observers
336
European Penetration of the Americas 1700 334
352
Credits
359
Copyright

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About the author (2003)

Margaret L. King, is Professor Emerita of history at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York. She is the author of several books on women, humanism, and Venice in the Renaissance, and is currently editor-in-chief of the Renaissance and Reformation online bibliography published by Oxford Bibliographies.

Bibliographic information