Venice Reconsidered: The History and Civilization of an Italian City-State, 1297-1797

by John Jeffries Martin (Editor), Dennis Romano (Editor)

Overview

Venice Reconsidered offers a dynamic portrait of Venice from the establishment of the Republic at the end of the thirteenth century to its fall to Napoleon in 1797. In contrast to earlier efforts to categorize Venice's politics as strictly republican and its society as rigidly tripartite and hierarchical, the scholars in this volume present a more fluid and complex interpretation of Venetian culture. Drawing on a variety of disciplines—history, art history, and musicology—these essays present innovative variants of the myth of Venice—that nearly inexhaustible repertoire of stories Venetians told about themselves.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780801873089
Publisher:	Johns Hopkins University Press
Publication date:	02/01/2003
Series:	History and Civilization of an Italian City-State, 1297-1797
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	560
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 1.30(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

John Jeffries Martin is a professor of history at Trinity University, the editor of The Renaissance: Italy and Abroad and co-editor of Venice Reconsidered: The History and Civilization of an Italian City-State, 1297–1797, also available from Johns Hopkins.

Dennis Romano is associate professor of history at Syracuse University. He is the author of Patricians and Popolani: The Social Foundations of the Venetian Renaissance State, also available from Johns Hopkins.

Table of Contents

Preface
List of Contributors
Part I. The Setting
Chapter 1. Toward an Ecological Understanding of the Myth of Venice
Part II. Politics and Culture
Chapter 2. The Serrata of the Great Council and Venetian Society, 1286–1323
Chapter 3. Hard Times and Ducal Radiance: Andrea Dandolo and the Construction of the Ruler in Fourteenth-Century Venice
Chapter 4. Was There Republicanism in the Renaissance Republics? Venice after Agnadello
Chapter 5. Confronting New Realities: Venice and the Peace of Bologna, 1530
Chapter 6. "A Plot Discover'd?"Myth, Legend, and the "Spanish"Conspiracy against Venice in 1618
Chapter 7. Opera, Festivity, and Spectacle in "Revolutionary"Venice: Phantasms of Time and History
Part III. Society and Culture
Chapter 8. Identity and Ideology in Renaissance Venice: The Third Serrata
Chapter 9. Behind the Walls: The Material Culture of Venetian Elites
Chapter 10. Elite Citizens
Chapter 11. Veronese's High Altarpiece for San Sebastiano: A Patrician Commissionfor Counter Reformation Church
Chapter 12. Early Modern Venice as a Center of Information and Communication
Chapter 13. Toward a Social History of Women in Venice: From the Renaissance to the Enlightenment
Chapter 14. Slave Redemption in Venice, 1585–1797
Part IV. After the Fall
Chapter 15. The Creation of Venetian Historiography
Index

What People are Saying About This

Daniela Hacke

This important and wide-ranging collection offers a variety of approaches to different aspects of Venetian history; the essays are substantial, based on extensive archival research, and well balanced; and they will prove essential reading for anyone interested in Venice for a long time to come.

Margaret F. Rosenthal

A dramatic reassessment of Venetian history.

Nicholas Davidson

An exemplary collection of essays which taken together demonstrate not only how much our view of Venice has changed in the past twenty-five years but also how much the Venetians' representation of themselves changed over the half millennium of the Republic's history.

From the Publisher

John Martin and Dennis Romano make a very persuasive and compelling argument for the radical shift in Venetian historiography, from the strands of myth and anti-myth in traditional scholarship to the contemporary image—more complex, more nuanced, and more flexible—developed by the other essays in this volume.
—Gene Brucker, University of California, Berkeley

An exemplary collection of essays which taken together demonstrate not only how much our view of Venice has changed in the past twenty-five years but also how much the Venetians' representation of themselves changed over the half millennium of the Republic's history.
—Nicholas Davidson, St. Edmund Hall, Oxford

This important and wide-ranging collection offers a variety of approaches to different aspects of Venetian history; the essays are substantial, based on extensive archival research, and well balanced; and they will prove essential reading for anyone interested in Venice for a long time to come.
—Daniela Hacke, University of Zurich

A dramatic reassessment of Venetian history.
—Margaret F. Rosenthal, University of Southern California

Gene Brucker

John Martin and Dennis Romano make a very persuasive and compelling argument for the radical shift in Venetian historiography, from the strands of myth and anti-myth in traditional scholarship to the contemporary image—more complex, more nuanced, and more flexible—developed by the other essays in this volume.

Editorial Reviews

A welcome and illuminating book.
—Thomas Kuehn, Journal of Interdisciplinary History

Succeeds both in reassessing outdated conceptions of life under the Venetian Republic and in proposing new fields of research . . . This book contributes substantially toward a more comprehensive, complex view of Venice . . . This is an exemplary collection of essays that provides a fresh look at five hundred years of Venetian social and political history.
—Christopher Carlsmith, Sixteenth-Century Journal

Provides an excellent survey of the state of current research on the city.
—Jonathan Walker, Journal of European Studies

Chronological width is matched by thematic wealth . . . The volume is likely to become a landmark in Venetian historiography.
—Filippo de Vivo, The Historical Journal

From the Publisher

Chronological width is matched by thematic wealth . . . The volume is likely to become a landmark in Venetian historiography.

The Historical Journal - Filippo de Vivo

A welcome and illuminating book.

Journal of Interdisciplinary History - Thomas Kuehn

Succeeds both in reassessing outdated conceptions of life under the Venetian Republic and in proposing new fields of research . . . This book contributes substantially toward a more comprehensive, complex view of Venice . . . This is an exemplary collection of essays that provides a fresh look at five hundred years of Venetian social and political history.

Sixteenth-Century Journal - Christopher Carlsmith

Provides an excellent survey of the state of current research on the city.

Journal of European Studies - Jonathan Walker

Chronological width is matched by thematic wealth... The volume is likely to become a landmark in Venetian historiography.

— Filippo de Vivo

The Historical Journal

Provides an excellent survey of the state of current research on the city.

— Jonathan Walker

Journal of European Studies

Succeeds both in reassessing outdated conceptions of life under the Venetian Republic and in proposing new fields of research... This book contributes substantially toward a more comprehensive, complex view of Venice... This is an exemplary collection of essays that provides a fresh look at five hundred years of Venetian social and political history.

— Christopher Carlsmith

Sixteenth-Century Journal

A welcome and illuminating book.

— Thomas Kuehn

Journal of Interdisciplinary History

The 15 essays collected here draw on a variety of disciplines (history, art history, and musicology) to create a more dynamic and complex picture than the traditional static interpretation of Venetian culture in the 500 years between the Republic's establishment and its fall to Napoleon. The themes that wind through the book include a collapse of the old chronological boundaries of Venetian history, an emphasis on fluidity and process in the study of Venetian politics and society, and the intrinsic role of art, music, and literature in fashioning the way Venetians understood and viewed themselves. The editors hope to inspire a new generation of students in a variety of fields to continue to raise new questions about the history of the Republic. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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