The Renaissance is usually portrayed as a period dominated by the extraordinary achievements of great men: rulers, philosophers, poets, painters, architects and scientists. Leading scholar Margaret King recasts the Renaissance as a more complex cultural movement rooted in a unique urban society that was itself the product of many factors and interactions: commerce, papal and imperial ambitions, artistic patronage, scientific discovery, aristocratic and popular violence, legal precedents, peasant migrations, famine, plague, invasion and other social factors. Together with literary and artistic achievements, therefore, today's Renaissance history includes the study of power, wealth, gender, class, honour, shame, ritual and other categories of historical investigation opened up in recent years. Tracing the diffusion of the Renaissance from Italy to the rest of Europe, Professor King marries the best work of the last generation of scholars with the findings of the most recent research, including her own. Ultimately, she points to the multiple ways in which this seminal epoch influenced the later development of Western culture and society."--Jacket.
Writing about the Renaissance can be a daunting task. Not only do scholars disagree on what the Renaissance is, but they also disagree on whether or not it even took place. Margaret L. King's richly illustrated social history of the Renaissance succeeds as a trusted resource, introducing readers to Europe between 1300–1700, as well as to the problems of cultural renewal. A Short History of the Renaissance in Europe includes a detailed discussion of Burckhardt as well as new content on European contact with the Islamic world. This new edition also provides improved coverage of the Protestant and Catholic Reformations. "Focus" features provide fascinating insights into the Renaissance era, and "Voices" sections introduce a wealth of primary sources. King's engaging narrative is enhanced by over 100 images, statistical tables, timelines, a glossary, and suggested readings.
Margaret L. King has put together a highly representative selection of readings from most of the more significant—but by no means the most obvious—texts by the authors who made up the movement we have come to call the 'Enlightenment.' They range across much of Europe and the Americas, and from the early seventeenth century until the end of the eighteenth. In the originality of the choice of texts, in its range and depth, this collection offers both wide coverage and striking insights into the intellectual transformation which has done more than any other to shape the world in which we live today. It is simply the best introduction to the subject now available." —Anthony Pagden, UCLA, and author of The Enlightenment and Why It Still Matters
In this informative and lively volume, Margaret L. King synthesizes a large body of literature on the condition of western European women in the Renaissance centuries (1350-1650), crafting a much-needed and unified overview of women's experience in Renaissance society. Utilizing the perspectives of social, church, and intellectual history, King looks at women of all classes, in both usual and unusual settings. She first describes the familial roles filled by most women of the day—as mothers, daughters, wives, widows, and workers. She turns then to that significant fraction of women in, and acted upon, by the church: nuns, uncloistered holy women, saints, heretics, reformers,and witches, devoting special attention to the social and economic independence monastic life afforded them. The lives of exceptional women, those warriors, queens, patronesses, scholars, and visionaries who found some other place in society for their energies and strivings, are explored, with consideration given to the works and writings of those first protesting female subordination: the French Christine de Pizan, the Italian Modesta da Pozzo, the English Mary Astell. Of interest to students of European history and women's studies, King's volume will also appeal to general readers seeking an informative, engaging entrance into the Renaissance period.
This compact anthology provides a thorough introduction to the major works of the Western literary tradition from Antiquity to 1700. It includes excerpts from seventy texts composed in eight ancient and modern languages and in genres as diverse as epic, lyric, and dramatic verse; prose narrative including story, romance, and novel; and non-fiction prose including autobiography, biography, letter, speech, dialogue, and essay. Contents include selections from the Hebrew Bible, New Testament, and works by Homer, Euripides, Virgil, Ovid, Saint Augustine, Dante, Chaucer, Machiavelli, Montaigne, Shakespeare, Milton, and many more. Further distinguishing this collection is the inclusion of works by women writers often overlooked in other literary anthologies, including works by Sappho, Margery Kempe, Marie de France, Christine de Pizan, and others. Margaret L. King's clear, engaging introductions and notes support an informed reading of the texts while extending reader's knowledge of particular authors and problems of interest. See available book previews to view the entire Table of Contents, or visit www.hackettpublishing.com for more information. The Western Literary Tradition's modest length and cost allow for the use of full-length works—many of which are available in Hackett Publishing's own well-regarded and inexpensive translations and editions—alongside the anthology without adding undue cost to a reader's total textbook fees.
The Renaissance is usually portrayed as a period dominated by the extraordinary achievements of great men: rulers, philosophers, poets, painters, architects and scientists. Leading scholar Margaret King recasts the Renaissance as a more complex cultural movement rooted in a unique urban society that was itself the product of many factors and interactions: commerce, papal and imperial ambitions, artistic patronage, scientific discovery, aristocratic and popular violence, legal precedents, peasant migrations, famine, plague, invasion and other social factors. Together with literary and artistic achievements, therefore, today's Renaissance history includes the study of power, wealth, gender, class, honour, shame, ritual and other categories of historical investigation opened up in recent years. Tracing the diffusion of the Renaissance from Italy to the rest of Europe, Professor King marries the best work of the last generation of scholars with the findings of the most recent research, including her own. Ultimately, she points to the multiple ways in which this seminal epoch influenced the later development of Western culture and society."--Jacket.
Margaret King shows what the death of a little boy named Valerio Marcello over five hundred years ago can tell us about his time. This child, scion of a family of power and privilege at Venice's time of greatness, left his father in a state of despair so profound and so public that it occasioned an outpouring of consoling letters, orations, treatises, and poems. In these documents, we find a firsthand account, richly colored by humanist conventions and expectations, of the life of the fifteenth-century boy, the passionate devotion of his father, the feelings of his brothers and sisters, the striking absence of his mother. The father's story is here as well: the career of a Venetian nobleman and scholar, patron and soldier, a participant in Venice's struggle for dominion in the north of Italy. Through these sources also King traces the cultural trends that made Marcello's century famous. Her work enlarges our view of the literature of consolation, which had a distinctive tradition in Venice, and shifting attitudes toward death from the late Middle Ages onward. For the depth and acuity of its insights into political, cultural, and private life in fifteenth-century Venice, this book will be essential reading for students of the Renaissance. For the grace and drama of its storytelling, it will be savored by anyone who wishes to look into life and death in a palace, and a city, long ago.
Originally published between 1975 and 2003, the essays included in Humanism, Venice, and Women reflect Margaret L. King's distinct but interlocking scholarly interests: humanism and Venice; women and humanism; and women of the Italian Renaissance. The first part focuses on defining the key characteristics of Venetian as opposed to other Italian humanisms, with an analysis of Gramscian theory about the historical role of intellectuals as an aid to understanding humanism in Venice, followed by essays on three Venetian humanists who wrote about family relationships (or the need to avoid them). The third section introduces the major Renaissance women humanists and analyzes the relation of their work to that of male humanists, along with an essay on Renaissance mothers of sons, in Italy and beyond. Crossing boundaries of region and gender, and the subdisciplines of intellectual and social history, these essays are provocative in themselves while demonstrating how shifting historiographical contexts encourage scholars to view the historical record in new and fruitful ways.
By far the best collection of sources to introduce readers to Renaissance humanism in all its many guises. What distinguishes this stimulating and useful anthology is the vision behind it: King shows that Renaissance thinkers had a lot to say, not only about the ancient world--one of their habitual passions--but also about the self, how civic experience was configured, the arts, the roles and contributions of women, the new science, the 'new' world, and so much more. --Christopher S. Celenza, Johns Hopkins University
This compact anthology provides a thorough introduction to the major works of the Western literary tradition from Antiquity to 1700. It includes excerpts from seventy texts composed in eight ancient and modern languages and in genres as diverse as epic, lyric, and dramatic verse; prose narrative including story, romance, and novel; and non-fiction prose including autobiography, biography, letter, speech, dialogue, and essay. Contents include selections from the Hebrew Bible, New Testament, and works by Homer, Euripides, Virgil, Ovid, Saint Augustine, Dante, Chaucer, Machiavelli, Montaigne, Shakespeare, Milton, and many more. Further distinguishing this collection is the inclusion of works by women writers often overlooked in other literary anthologies, including works by Sappho, Margery Kempe, Marie de France, Christine de Pizan, and others. Margaret L. King's clear, engaging introductions and notes support an informed reading of the texts while extending reader's knowledge of particular authors and problems of interest. See available book previews to view the entire Table of Contents, or visit www.hackettpublishing.com for more information. The Western Literary Tradition's modest length and cost allow for the use of full-length works—many of which are available in Hackett Publishing's own well-regarded and inexpensive translations and editions—alongside the anthology without adding undue cost to a reader's total textbook fees.
In this informative and lively volume, Margaret L. King synthesizes a large body of literature on the condition of western European women in the Renaissance centuries (1350-1650), crafting a much-needed and unified overview of women's experience in Renaissance society. Utilizing the perspectives of social, church, and intellectual history, King looks at women of all classes, in both usual and unusual settings. She first describes the familial roles filled by most women of the day—as mothers, daughters, wives, widows, and workers. She turns then to that significant fraction of women in, and acted upon, by the church: nuns, uncloistered holy women, saints, heretics, reformers,and witches, devoting special attention to the social and economic independence monastic life afforded them. The lives of exceptional women, those warriors, queens, patronesses, scholars, and visionaries who found some other place in society for their energies and strivings, are explored, with consideration given to the works and writings of those first protesting female subordination: the French Christine de Pizan, the Italian Modesta da Pozzo, the English Mary Astell. Of interest to students of European history and women's studies, King's volume will also appeal to general readers seeking an informative, engaging entrance into the Renaissance period.
Although many opera dictionaries and encyclopedias are available, very few are devoted exclusively to operas in a single language. In this revised and expanded edition of Operas in English: A Dictionary, Margaret Ross Griffel brings up to date her original work on operas written specifically to an English text (including works both originally prepared in English, as well as English translations). Since its original publication in 1999, Griffel has added nearly 800 entries to the 4,300 from the original volume, covering the world of opera in the English language from 1634 through 2011. Listed alphabetically by letter, each opera entry includes alternative titles, if any; a full, descriptive title; the number of acts; the composer’s name; the librettist’s name, the original language of the libretto, and the original source of the text, with the source title; the date, place, and cast of the first performance; the date of composition, if it occurred substantially earlier than the premiere date; similar information for the first U.S. (including colonial) and British (i.e., in England, Scotland, or Wales) performances, where applicable; a brief plot summary; the main characters (names and vocal ranges, where known); some of the especially noteworthy numbers cited by name; comments on special musical problems, techniques, or other significant aspects; and other settings of the text, including non-English ones, and/or other operas involving the same story or characters (cross references are indicated by asterisks). Entries also include such information as first and critical editions of the score and libretto; a bibliography, ranging from scholarly studies to more informal journal articles and reviews; a discography; and information on video recordings. Griffel also includes four appendixes, a selective bibliography, and two indexes. The first appendix lists composers, their places and years of birth and death, and their operas included in the text as entries; the second does the same for librettists; the third records authors whose works inspired or were adapted for the librettos; and the fourth comprises a chronological listing of the A–Z entries, including as well as the date of first performance, the city of the premiere, the short title of the opera, and the composer. Griffel also include a main character index and an index of singers, conductors, producers, and other key figures.
In comprehensive detail Margaret King analyzes the activities of the patricians who were predominant in the ranks of the humanists and who made humanist thought a powerful tool in the service of their class and of the city itself. Originally published in 1986. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
For introductory courses in Western Civilization. These texts explain why western civilization is worth knowing about. Taking a topical approach, they stress social and cultural themes, they ask, "What is the West?", and incorporates significant discussion of peoples and civilizations outside the boundaries of the West. Written by a single author, who understands the needs of typical college students, Western Civilization, 2/e is accompanied by rich visual images, numerous textual excerpts, provocative special features, and timelines, charts and maps that make the narrative even more accessible.
Margaret L. King has put together a highly representative selection of readings from most of the more significant—but by no means the most obvious—texts by the authors who made up the movement we have come to call the 'Enlightenment.' They range across much of Europe and the Americas, and from the early seventeenth century until the end of the eighteenth. In the originality of the choice of texts, in its range and depth, this collection offers both wide coverage and striking insights into the intellectual transformation which has done more than any other to shape the world in which we live today. It is simply the best introduction to the subject now available." —Anthony Pagden, UCLA, and author of The Enlightenment and Why It Still Matters
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