Paola Ugolini

Anti-courtly discourse furnished a platform for discussing some of the most pressing questions of early modern Italian society. The court was the space that witnessed a new form of negotiation of identity and prestige, the definition of masculinity and of gender-specific roles, the birth of modern politics and of an ethics based on merit and on individual self-interest. The Court and Its Critics analyses anti-courtly critiques using a wide variety of sources including manuals of courtliness, dialogues, satires, and plays, from the mid-fifteenth to the early seventeenth century. The book is structured around four key figures that embody different features of anti-courtly sentiments. The figure of the courtier shows that sentiments against the court were present even among those who apparently benefitted from such a system of power. The court lady allows an investigation of the intertwining of anti-courtliness and anti-feminism. The satirist and the shepherd of pastoral dramas are investigated as attempts to fashion two different forms of a new self for the court intellectual.

Anti-Court Sentiments in Early Modern Italy

The Court and Its Critics

The Court and Its Critics focuses on the disillusionment with courtliness, the derision of those who live at court, and the open hostility toward the court, themes common to Renaissance culture.

Court and Its Critics

Marco Faini

An interdisciplinary exploration of one of the most prolific and controversial figures of early modern Europe. This volume is comprised of seven sections, each devoted to a specific aspect Aretino’s life and works.

A Companion to Pietro Aretino

Elena Bellina

Lindsay Eufusia

How do we represent ouselves and the cultures we live in? Is it possible to trace any boundaries between reality and self-representation? Because the self represented is the product of a process of selection and choice, in many ways to represent the self is, often simultaneously, to create the self and negate the self. What, then, becomes of the self once it is represented? Because the process of self-representation cumulates in a tangible result and given that any representation of the self is necessarily a construct which aims to render visible or knowable in concrete form the unseen and unknown, self-representation is vulnerable to assessments of its naturalness or artificiality, its honesty or deceit. Many issues affect the author or artist’s self-representation, both as process and form: the medium through which the self will be represented, the motivation for representing oneself, and the role of the audience, to name only a few relevant factors. This book explores the multifaceted nature of self-representation in relation to culture from the Middle Ages through the Renaissance up to contemporary Italian, American and Australian culture with reference to concepts and questions connected to literature, poetry, philosophy, theology, history, ethnicity studies, gender studies, and visual arts.

Paola Ugolini

Books

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