Konrad Eisenbichler

This ground-breaking study of Italian-Canadian writers and artists with roots in Istria and Dalmatia highlights the history of their diaspora, the vitality of their literary and artistic works, and the distinctive multiculturalism that characterises them.

Julian-Dalmatian Writers and Artists in Canada

Forgotten Italians

Robert Sweetman

Gay MacDonald

Bibles, Theological Treatises, and Other Religious Literature 1491-1700 at the Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, Victoria University, Toronto

Wim N. M. Hüsken

From the Fool to the Wildman, from the irate Reformer to the festive Masqueraders, this collection of articles offers a variety of topics, approaches, and agendas in the study of early modern European theatre. With samplings from Scandinavia, Germany, England, France, the Iberian peninsula, and even the New World, this collection also spans time, from the late fifteenth century to the present. In the process, Carnival and the carnivalesque are examined from archival, Bakhtinian, cultural, and even political points of view. The articles in this collection reveal the variety and inherent vitality of scholarship in early modern theatre. The thirteen essays have been selected from presentations made at the Eighth Triennial Congress of the Société Internationale pour l'Etude du Théâtre Médiéval held in Toronto (1995), under the auspices of the Records of Early English Drama project and Victoria University in the University of Toronto.

The Fool, the Reformer, the Wildman, and Others in Early Modern Theatre

Carnival and the Carnivalesque

In The Sword and the Pen: Women, Politics, and Poetry in Sixteenth-Century Siena, Konrad Eisenbichler analyzes the work of Sienese women poets, in particular, Aurelia Petrucci, Laudomia Forteguerri, and Virginia Salvi, during the first half of the sixteenth century up to the fall of Siena in 1555. Eisenbichler sets forth a complex and original interpretation of the experiences of these three educated noblewomen and their contributions to contemporary culture in Siena by looking at the emergence of a new lyric tradition and the sonnets they exchanged among themselves and with their male contemporaries. Through the analysis of their poems and various book dedications to them, Eisenbichler reveals the intersection of poetry, politics, and sexuality, as well as the gendered dialogue that characterized Siena's literary environment during the late Renaissance. Eisenbichler also examines other little-known women poets and their relationship to the cultural environment of Siena, underlining the exceptional role of the city of Siena as the most important center of women's writing in the first half of the sixteenth century in Italy, and probably in all of Europe. This innovative contribution to the field of late Renaissance and early modern Italian and women's studies rescues from near oblivion a group of literate women who were celebrated by contemporary scholars but who have been largely ignored today, both because of a dearth of biographical information about them and because of a narrow evaluation of their poetry. Eisenbichler's analysis and reproduction of many of their poems in Italian and modern English translation are an invaluable contribution not only to Italian cultural studies but also to women's studies.

Women, Politics, and Poetry in Sixteenth-Century Siena

The Sword and the Pen

This collection of papers offers a re-evaluation of the alleged destroyer of Florentine liberty & republicanism, the much maligned Duke Cosimo I de' Medici. He used the legal system to achieve his objectives in an intelligent manner.

The Cultural Politics of Duke Cosimo I De'Medici

When he suddenly came to power in Italy in 1537, the young Duke Cosimo I de' Medici amazed friends and foes alike with his ability to extricate himself from mortal danger, affirm his authority and revive a dying state. He doubled the size of his duchy and established a dynasty that ruled unchallenged for 200 years. This volume is the first book-length study in any language to approach the figure of Duke Cosimo I from the point of view of his cultural agenda. The contributors examine the political, economic, cultural and linguistic strategies that made Cosimo a successful leader, and in the process illuminate the cultural world of mid-sixteenth-century Tuscany.

The Cultural Politics of Duke Cosimo I de' Medici

Confraternities and their contribution to the fabric of society have become invisible history for us today. Although their activities began in the Renaissance and continued until the end of the Enlightenment, confraternities have not yet found a place in the standard histories of the period, or even in the histories of religion or of the Church. With "The Boys of the Archangel Raphael," Konrad Eisenbichler brings to light the daily life and history of one such organization from its founding in 1411 to its final suppression in 1785. While focusing on the Compagnia dell'Arcangelo Raffaello, the first confraternity to be established in Florence, the author also discusses other, similar organizations. By constantly comparing developments across several confraternities, the book provides us with insight into the entire phenomenon of premodern lay religious associations for youths. The study is firmly grounded on archival and contemporary documents, and covers a variety of fields of interest: social history, church history, the history of childhood, and the history of art, literature, and music. "The Boys of the Archangel Raphael" will be the authoritative work on youth confraternities for years to come. Winner of the Howard R. Marraro Prize of the American Catholic Historical Association.

Konrad Eisenbichler

Books

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