A Short History of Renaissance Italy / Edition 1

by Lisa Kaborycha

Overview

The book follows an interdisciplinary approach and covers the origins of the Italian Renaissance through the Baroque period. It is comprised of fifteen chapters, organized chronologically, along with an introduction and conclusion.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780136054849
Publisher:	Pearson
Publication date:	02/12/2020
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	6.70(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Lisa Kaborycha has a Ph.D. in Medieval and Early Modern History and an M.A. in Italian Studies from the University of California, Berkeley, where for years she taught undergraduate courses in Renaissance Italian History and Culture. A former recipient of the Fulbright Award and National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow at the Medici Archive Project, Dr. Kaborycha currently resides in Florence, Italy, where she is a Research Fellow at Villa I Tatti, the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies.

Table of Contents

Foreword by Gene Brucker

Preface “Why another book on the Italian Renaissance?”

Chapter 1: Out of the Ashes: The Rise of the Communes and Florence in the Age of Dante

Chapter 2: The Crisis of the Fourteenth Century: Climatic, Epidemic, Demographic Disaster

Chapter 3: Chapter Three. “Back to the Future: Italian humanists recover the classical past”

Chapter 4: Caput mundi again? Rome from Cola di Rienzo to Pius II

Chapter 5: Hearth and Home: Lay piety, women, and the family

Chapter 6: Lords of the Renaissance: The Medici, Visconti, and Sforza Dynasties through 1466

Chapter 7: The Mezzogiorno: The “Other Renaissance” in Naples and Sicily

Chapter 8: La Serenissima: When Venice Ruled the Seas

Chapter 9: Magnificent Florence 1469-1492

Chapter 10: 1494.“ The Calamities of Italy” Begin

Chapter 11: Paradoxes of the High Renaissance: Art in a Time of Turmoil

Chapter 12: The 1527 Sack of Rome and Its Aftermath: Courtiers and Courtesans in High Renaissance Literature

Chapter 13: Reformations, political, religious, and artistic 1530-1563

Chapter 14: The ‘Imperial Renaissance’: Italy during the Spanish peace 1559-1598

Chapter 15 Celestial revolutions and earthly discoveries at the turn of the seventeenth century

Epilogue. The End of the Renaissance?

Editorial Reviews

Dr. Kaborycha’s A Short History of Renaissance Italy is based on a thorough knowledge

of current literature. She is aware of the controversies among scholars over the interpretation

of this epoch. She analyzes the tension between continuity and change in

these centuries, from the ravages of the Black Death in the 1340s, to the revival in the

fifteenth century, and the dramatic consequences of the foreign invasions after 1494.

A notable quality of this work is the author’s integration of every significant feature of

this era, from climate and geography to politics, the economy, and religion and culture.

Her choice of literary and artistic sources, from Homer and Cicero to Dante and

Michelangelo, is always pertinent and instructive. She begins each chapter by setting

the scene with apt quotations or illustrations to establish the context of her analysis.

Her writing style is lucid and often eloquent, and she takes care to explain unfamiliar

concepts and themes. Her suggestions for further reading are well chosen. This book

is an exemplary narrative and analysis of a major chapter in the history of Western

civilization.

Gene A. Brucker

Shepard Professor of History, Emeritus

University of California, Berkeley

From the Publisher