Douglas Biow's Books

On the Importance of Being an Individual in Renaissance Italy

Men, Their Professions, and Their Beards

By: Douglas Biow

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

On the Importance of Being an Individual in Renaissance Italy

Men, Their Professions, and Their Beards

By: Douglas Biow

In recent decades, scholars have vigorously revised Jacob Burckhardt's notion that the free, untrammeled, and essentially modern Western individual emerged in Renaissance Italy. Douglas Biow does not deny the strong cultural and historical constraints that placed limits on identity formation in the early modern period. Still, as he contends in this witty, reflective, and generously illustrated book, the category of the individual was important and highly complex for a variety of men in this particular time and place, for both those who belonged to the elite and those who aspired to be part of it. Biow explores the individual in light of early modern Italy's new patronage systems, educational programs, and work opportunities in the context of an increased investment in professionalization, the changing status of artisans and artists, and shifting attitudes about the ideology of work, fashion, and etiquette. He turns his attention to figures familiar (Benvenuto Cellini, Baldassare Castiglione, Niccolò Machiavelli, Jacopo Tintoretto, Giorgio Vasari) and somewhat less so (the surgeon-physician Leonardo Fioravanti, the metallurgist Vannoccio Biringuccio). One could excel as an individual, he demonstrates, by possessing an indefinable nescio quid, by acquiring, theorizing, and putting into practice a distinct body of professional knowledge, or by displaying the exclusively male adornment of impressively designed facial hair. Focusing on these and other matters, he reveals how we significantly impoverish our understanding of the past if we dismiss the notion of the individual from our narratives of the Italian and the broader European Renaissance.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

324

Publisher

University of Pennsylvania Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

081229050X

ISBN 13

9780812290509

Vasari's Words

The 'Lives of the Artists' as a History of Ideas in the Italian Renaissance

By: Douglas Biow

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Vasari's Words

The 'Lives of the Artists' as a History of Ideas in the Italian Renaissance

By: Douglas Biow

Explores through keywords how Vasari's Lives is designed to address a variety of compelling, culturally determined ideas.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

261

Publisher

Cambridge University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1108472052

ISBN 13

9781108472050

The Culture of Cleanliness in Renaissance Italy

By: Douglas Biow

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

The Culture of Cleanliness in Renaissance Italy

By: Douglas Biow

Concerned about sanitation during a severe bout of plague in Milan, Leonardo da Vinci designed an ideal, clean city. Leonardo was far from alone among his contemporaries in thinking about personal and public hygiene, as Douglas Biow shows in The Culture of Cleanliness in Renaissance Italy. A concern for cleanliness, he argues, was everywhere in the Renaissance.Anxieties about cleanliness were expressed in literature from humanist panegyrics to bawdy carnival songs, as well as in the visual arts. Biow surveys them all to explain why the topic so permeated Renaissance culture. At one level, cleanliness, he documents, was a matter of real concern in the Renaissance. At another, he finds, issues such as human dignity, self-respect, self-discipline, social distinction, and originality were rethought as a matter of artistic concern.The Culture of Cleanliness in Renaissance Italy moves from the clean to the unclean, from the lofty to the base. Biow first examines the socially elevated, who defined and distinguished themselves as clean, pure, and polite. He then turns to soap, an increasingly common commodity in this period, and the figure of the washerwoman. Finally he focuses on latrines, which were universally scorned yet functioned artistically as figures of baseness, creativity, and fun in the works of Dante and Boccaccio. Paralleling this social stratification is a hierarchy of literary and visual artifacts, from the discourse of high humanism to filthy curses and scatological songs. Deftly bringing together high and low-as well as literary and visual-cultures, this book provides a fresh perspective on the Italian Renaissance and its artistic legacy.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

270

Publisher

Cornell University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1501726846

ISBN 13

9781501726842

Mirabile Dictu

Representations of the Marvelous in Medieval and Renaissance Epic

By: Douglas Biow

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Mirabile Dictu

Representations of the Marvelous in Medieval and Renaissance Epic

By: Douglas Biow

Insightful survey of literary connections among major poets of the classical, medieval, and Renaissance periods.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

222

Publisher

University of Michigan Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0472106910

ISBN 13

9780472106912

Doctors, Ambassadors, Secretaries

Humanism and Professions in Renaissance Italy

By: Douglas Biow

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Doctors, Ambassadors, Secretaries

Humanism and Professions in Renaissance Italy

By: Douglas Biow

In this book, Douglas Biow traces the role that humanists played in the development of professions and professionalism in Renaissance Italy, and vice versa. For instance, humanists were initially quite hostile to medicine, viewing it as poorly adapted to their program of study. They much preferred the secretarial profession, which they made their own throughout the Renaissance and eventually defined in treatises in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Examining a wide range of treatises, poems, and other works that humanists wrote both as and about doctors, ambassadors, and secretaries, Biow shows how interactions with these professions forced humanists to make their studies relevant to their own times, uniting theory and practice in a way that strengthened humanism. His detailed analyses of writings by familiar and lesser-known figures, from Petrarch, Machiavelli, and Tasso to Maggi, Fracastoro, and Barbaro, will especially interest students of Renaissance Italy, but also anyone concerned with the rise of professionalism during the early modern period.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

242

Publisher

University of Chicago Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0226051714

ISBN 13

9780226051710

Master of None

The Life Enriched Reminiscences of a 20th Century Survivor

By: Douglas Goddard

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Master of None

The Life Enriched Reminiscences of a 20th Century Survivor

By: Douglas Goddard

Master of None is an autobiography of a retired Army officer from his humble childhood in London and Suffolk farms, through the ravages of World War 2, his subsequent civilian career in the Building Industry and latterly his extensive commitment to community service. The broad range of his experiences, talents and interests, together with his engaging and charmingly self-deprecating writing style, make for a very interesting read.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

672

Publisher

Troubador Publishing Ltd

Published Date

ISBN 10

1848761791

ISBN 13

9781848761797

Montaigne and the Tolerance of Politics

By: Douglas I. Thompson

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Montaigne and the Tolerance of Politics

By: Douglas I. Thompson

Toleration is one of the most studied concepts in contemporary political theory and philosophy, yet the range of contemporary normative prescriptions concerning how to do toleration or how to be tolerant is remarkably narrow and limited. Contemporary thinking about toleration evinces, paradoxically, an intolerance of politics. This book argues for toleration as a practice of negotiation, looking to a philosopher not usually considered political: Michel de Montaigne. For Montaigne, toleration is an expansive, active practice of political endurance in negotiating public goods across lines of value difference. In other words, to be tolerant means to possess a particular set of political capacities for negotiation. Douglas Thompson draws on Montaigne's Essais to recover the idea that political negotiation grows out of genuine care for public goods and the establishment of political trust. Thompson argues that we need a Montaignian conception of toleration today if we are to negotiate effectively the circumstances of increasing political polarization and ongoing value conflict, and he applies this notion to current debates in political theory, as well to contemporary issues, including the problem of migration and refugee asylum. Additionally, for Montaigne scholars, he reads the Essais principally as a work of public political education, and resituates the work as an extension of Montaigne's political activity as a high-level negotiator between Catholic and Huguenot parties during the French Wars of Religion"--

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

249

Publisher

Oxford University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

019067993X

ISBN 13

9780190679934

Vasari's Words

The 'Lives of the Artists' as a History of Ideas in the Italian Renaissance

By: Douglas Biow

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Vasari's Words

The 'Lives of the Artists' as a History of Ideas in the Italian Renaissance

By: Douglas Biow

In this book, Douglas Biow analyzes Vasari's Lives of the Artists - often considered the first great work of art history in the modern era - from a new perspective. He focuses on key words and shows how they address a variety of compelling, culturally determined ideas circulating in late Renaissance Italy. The keywords chosen for this study investigate five seemingly divergent, yet still interconnected, ideas. What does it mean to have a 'profession', professione, and possess 'genius', ingegno, in the visual arts? How is 'speed', prestezza, valued among visual artists of the period and how is 'time', tempo, conceptualized in Vasari's narrative and descriptions of visual art? Finally, how is the 'night', notte, conceived and visually represented as a distinct span of time in The Lives? Written in an engaging manner for specialists and non-specialists alike, Vasari's Words places the Lives - a truly foundational and innovative book of Western culture - within the context of the modern discipline of intellectual history.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

261

Publisher

Cambridge University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1108683371

ISBN 13

9781108683371

How to Use Windows

By: Douglas Hergert

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

How to Use Windows

By: Douglas Hergert

An illustrated tutorial for beginners new to the Windows interface. In an attractive full-color format, this book presents the 50 most important topics for beginning users. Each topic appears in a self-contained two-page format that outlines the steps for accomplishing specific tasks. Each application chapter provides you with examples, tips, and projects to try.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

164

Publisher

Emeryville, Calif. : Ziff-Davis Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1562761900

ISBN 13

9781562761905

The Culture of Cleanliness in Renaissance Italy

By: Douglas Biow

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

The Culture of Cleanliness in Renaissance Italy

By: Douglas Biow

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

270

Publisher

Cornell University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1501726846

ISBN 13

9781501726842

Doctors, Ambassadors, Secretaries

Humanism and Professions in Renaissance Italy

By: Douglas Biow

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Doctors, Ambassadors, Secretaries

Humanism and Professions in Renaissance Italy

By: Douglas Biow

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

242

Publisher

University of Chicago Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0226051714

ISBN 13

9780226051710

In Your Face

Professional Improprieties and the Art of Being Conspicuous in Sixteenth-century Italy

By: Douglas Biow

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

In Your Face

Professional Improprieties and the Art of Being Conspicuous in Sixteenth-century Italy

By: Douglas Biow

This study concentrates on the Renaissance concern with 'self-fashioning' by examining how a group of Renaissance artists and writers encoded their own improprieties in their works of art. In the elitist court society of sixteenth-century Italy, where moderation, limitation, and discretion were generally held to be essential virtues, these men consistently sought to stand out and to underplay their conspicuousness at once.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

246

Published Date

ISBN 10

0804773378

ISBN 13

9780804773379

In Your Face

Professional Improprieties and the Art of Being Conspicuous in Sixteenth-century Italy

By: Douglas Biow

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

In Your Face

Professional Improprieties and the Art of Being Conspicuous in Sixteenth-century Italy

By: Douglas Biow

In Your Face concentrates on the basic Renaissance concern with self-fashioning by examining the behavior of some notorious Italian artists and writers, including Michelangelo and Benvenuto Cellini, who upset the decorum of their time on a grand scale.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

246

Published Date

ISBN 10

0804762163

ISBN 13

9780804762168

Mirabile Dictu

Representations of the Marvelous in Medieval and Renaissance Epic

By: Douglas Biow

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Mirabile Dictu

Representations of the Marvelous in Medieval and Renaissance Epic

By: Douglas Biow

Insightful survey of literary connections among major poets of the classical, medieval, and Renaissance periods.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

222

Publisher

University of Michigan Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0472106910

ISBN 13

9780472106912

On the Importance of Being an Individual in Renaissance Italy

Men, Their Professions, and Their Beards

By: Douglas Biow

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

On the Importance of Being an Individual in Renaissance Italy

Men, Their Professions, and Their Beards

By: Douglas Biow

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

324

Publisher

University of Pennsylvania Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

081229050X

ISBN 13

9780812290509

Douglas Fairbanks

In His Own Words

By: Douglas Fa The Douglas Fairbanks Museum,Keri Leigh,The Douglas Fairbanks Museum

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Douglas Fairbanks

In His Own Words

By: Douglas Fa The Douglas Fairbanks Museum,Keri Leigh,The Douglas Fairbanks Museum

An anthology presented by The Douglas Fairbanks Museum of his writings including his short stories, autobiographical accounts, interviews, personal correspondence, and original story treatments of his classic films, as well as rare photographs, original documents, autographs and vintage memorabilia from the museum's archives.

Average ratings

N/A