| Angelica's Book and the World of Reading in Late Renaissance Italy Contributor(s): Dooley, Brendan (Author) |
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ISBN: 135006713X ISBN-13: 9781350067134 Publisher: Continnuum-3PL OUR PRICE: $47.47 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: April 2018 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Literary Criticism | Books & Reading - History | Europe - Italy - Art | History - Renaissance |
| Dewey: 028.909 |
| Series: Cultures of Early Modern Europe |
| Physical Information: 0.45" H x 6.14" W x 9.21" (0.67 lbs) 216 pages |
| Themes: - Cultural Region - Italy |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Through the lens of a history of material culture mediated by an object, Angelica's Book and the World of Reading in Late Renaissance Italy investigates aspects of women's lives, culture, ideas and the history of the book in early modern Italy. Inside a badly damaged copy of Straparola's 16th-century work, Piacevoli Notti, acquired in a Florentine antique shop in 2010, an inscription is found, attributing ownership to a certain Angelica Baldachini. The discovery sets in motion a series of inquiries, deploying knowledge about calligraphy, orthography, linguistics, dialectology and the socio-psychology of writing, to reveal the person behind the name. Focusing as much on the possible owner as upon the thing owned, Angelica's Book examines the genesis of the Piacevoli Notti and its many editions, including the one in question. The intertwined stories of the book and its owner are set against the backdrop of a Renaissance world, still imperfectly understood, in which literature and reading were subject to regimes of control; and the new information throws aspects of this world into further relief, especially in regard to women's involvement with reading, books and knowledge. The inquiry yields unexpected insights concerning the logic of accidental discovery, the nature of evidence, and the mission of the humanities in a time of global crisis. Angelica's Book and the World of Reading in Late Renaissance Italy is a thought-provoking read for any scholar of early modern Europe and its culture. |
Contributor Bio(s): Dooley, Brendan: - Brendan Dooley is Professor of Renaissance Studies at University College Cork, Ireland. His numerous publications include A Mattress Maker's Daughter: The Renaissance Romance of Don Giovanni de' Medici and Livia Vernazza (2014), Morandi's Last Prophecy and the End of Renaissance Politics (2002) and, as author/ editor, The Dissemination of News and the Emergence of Contemporaneity in Early Modern Europe (2010).Kumin, Beat: - Beat Kümin is Professor of Early Modern European History at the University of Warwick, UK. He is the author of The Communal Age in Western Europe c. 1100-1800 (2013), Drinking Matters: Public Houses and Social Exchange in Early Modern Central Europe (2007) and The Shaping of a Community: The Rise & Reformation of the English Parish c. 1400-1560 (1996). He is also the editor of A Cultural History of Food in the Early Modern Age (2012), Political Space in Pre-industrial Europe (2009) and The European World 1500-1800: An Introduction to Early Modern History (2nd Ed., 2014), amongst other volumes.Cowan, Brian: - Brian Cowan is Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Early Modern British History at McGill University, Canada. He is the author of The Social Life of Coffee: The Emergence of the British Coffeehouse (2005), which was awarded the Wallace K. Ferguson Prize by the Canadian Historical Association in 2006, and The State Trial of Doctor Henry Sacheverell (2012). |