An Italian Renaissance Sextet

Download or read book An Italian Renaissance Sextet written by Lauro Martines and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2004-01-01 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An Italian Renaissance Sextet is a collection of six tales offering a unique view of the history of Renaissance Italy, with fiction and fictional modes becoming gateways to a real, historical world. All written between 1400 and 1500 - among them a rare gem by Lorenzo the Magnificent and a famous account featuring Filippo Brunelleschi - the stories are presented here in lively translations. As engrossing, fresh, and high-spirited as those in Boccaccio's Decameron, the tales deal with marriage, deception, rural manners, gender relations, social ambitions, adultery, homosexuality, and the demands of individual identity. Each is accompanied by an essay, in which Lauro Martines situates the story in its temporal context, transforming it into an outright historical document. The stories and essays focus mainly on people from the ordinary and middling ranks of society, as they go about their ordinary lives, under the pressure of a highly practical, conformist, pleasure-loving (but often cruel) urban society. Revealing the concerns of a searching historical work with a combined anthropological, demographic, and cultural slant, An Italian Renaissance Sextet shines a probing light on Italian Renaissance culture.

Download or read book Magnifico written by Miles J. Unger and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2008-05-06 with total page 539 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A vividly colorful portrait of one of the greatest and most fascinating figures of the Renaissance, Lorenzo de' Medici, focusing on his role as a brilliant—sometimes ruthless—statesman who was responsible for the artistic flowering of Florence, the city where the Renaissance first blossomed. Lorenzo de' Medici—a leading statesman, the uncrowned ruler of Florence during its golden age, a true Renaissance man known to history as Il Magnifico (the Magnificent). Lorenzo was not only the foremost patron of his day but also a renowned poet, equally adept at composing philosophical verses and obscene rhymes to be sung at Carnival. He befriended the greatest artists and writers of the time—Leonardo, Botticelli, Poliziano, and, especially, Michelangelo, whom he discovered as a young boy and invited to live at his palace—and, in the process, turned Florence into the cultural capital of Europe. Though Lorenzo's grandfather Cosimo had converted the vast wealth of the family bank into political power, Lorenzo's position was precarious. Bitter rivalries among the leading Florentine families and competition among the squabbling Italian states meant that Lorenzo's life was under constant threat. Those who plotted his death included a pope, a king, and a duke, but Lorenzo used his legendary charm and diplomatic skill—as well as occasional acts of violence—to navigate the murderous labyrinth of Italian politics. Florence in the age of Lorenzo was a city of contrasts, of unparalleled artistic brilliance and unimaginable squalor in the city's crowded tenements; of both pagan excess and the fire-and-brimstone sermons of the Dominican preacher Savonarola. Florence gave birth to both the otherworldly perfection of Botticelli's Primavera and the gritty realism of Machiavelli's The Prince. Nowhere was this world of contrasts more perfectly embodied than in the life and character of the man who ruled this most fascinating city.

Download or read book Italian Literature Before 1900 in English Translation written by Robin Healey and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2011-01-01 with total page 1185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Italian Literature before 1900 in English Translation provides the most complete record possible of texts from the early periods that have been translated into English, and published between 1929 and 2008. It lists works from all genres and subjects, and includes translations wherever they have appeared across the globe. In this annotated bibliography, Robin Healey covers over 5,200 distinct editions of pre-1900 Italian writings. Most entries are accompanied by useful notes providing information on authors, works, translators, and how the translations were received. Among the works by over 1,500 authors represented in this volume are hundreds of editions by Italy's most translated authors - Dante Alighieri, [Niccoláo] Machiavelli, and [Giovanni] Boccaccio - and other hundreds which represent the author's only English translation. A significant number of entries describe works originally published in Latin. Together with Healey's Twentieth-Century Italian Literature in English Translation, this volume makes comprehensive information on translations accessible for schools, libraries, and those interested in comparative literature."--Pub. desc.

Download or read book Machiavelli written by Miles Unger and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-06-12 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Few philosophers are more often referred to and more often misunderstood than Machiavelli. He was truly a product of the Renaissance, and he was as much a revolutionary in the field of political philosophy as Leonardo or Michelangelo were in painting and sculpture. He watched his native Florence lose its independence to the French, thanks to poor leadership from the Medici successors to the great Lorenzo (Il Magnifico). Machiavelli was a keen observer of people, and he spent years studying events and people before writing his famous books. Descended from minor nobility, Machiavelli grew up in a household that was run by a vacillating and incompetent father. He was well educated and smart, and he entered government service as a clerk. He eventually became an important figure in the Florentine state but was defeated by the deposed Medici and Pope Julius II. He was tortured but eventually freed by the restored Medici. No longer employed, he retired to his home to write the books for which he is remembered. Machiavelli had seen the best and the worst of human nature, and he understood how the world operated. He drew his observations from life, and he was appropriately cynical in his writing, given what he had personally experienced. He was an outstanding writer, and his work remains fascinating nearly 500 years later.

Download or read book Creating the "Divine" Artist: From Dante to Michelangelo written by Patricia Emison and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2004-05-01 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An investigation of why Michelangelo first, and then many other, Renaissance artists and works were called "divine" by contemporaries, this study ranges from fourteenth-century praise of Dante to a variety of sixteenth-century habits of courtly compliment.

Download or read book Five Comedies written by Carlo Goldoni and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2016-01-01 with total page 453 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The new house -- The coffee house -- Off to the country -- Adventures in the country -- Back from the country

Download or read book The Complete Poetry of Giacomo da Lentini written by Giacomo da Lentini and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2018-05-04 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume presents the first translation in English of the complete poetry of Giacomo da Lentini, the first major lyric poet of the Italian vernacular. He was the leading exponent of the Sicilian School (c.1220-1270) as well as the inventor of the sonnet. Featuring illustrations and new English translations of some forty lyrics, Richard Lansing revives the work of a pioneer of Italian literature, a poet who helped pave the way for later writers such as Dante and Petrarch. Giacomo da Lentini is hailed as the earliest poet to import the Occitan tradition of love poetry into the Italian vernacular. This edition of Giacomo fills a gap in the canon of translations of Italian literature in English and serves as a vital reference source for students as well as scholars and teachers interested in the literature of the romance languages.