How cultural categories shaped--and were shaped by--new ideas about controlling nature Ranging from alchemy to necromancy, "e;books of secrets"e; offered medieval readers an affordable and accessible collection of knowledge about the natural world.
More than just an expression of religious authority or an instrument of social control, the Inquisition was an arena where cultures met and clashed on both shores of the Atlantic.
Great halls and hovels, dove-houses and sheepcotes, mountain cells and seaside shelters-these are some of the spaces in which Shakespearean characters gather to dwell, and to test their connections with one another and their worlds.
The first biography of Henry VIII's court fool William Somer, a legendary entertainer and one of the most intriguing figures of the Tudor ageIn some portraits of Henry VIII there appears another, striking figurea gaunt and morose-looking man with a shaved head and, in one case, a monkey on his shoulder.
*THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER**SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOLFSON HISTORY PRIZE**A TIMES, SUNDAY TIMES AND BBC HISTORY BOOK OF THE YEAR*'A bona fide historical classic' Sunday Times'Simply one of the best history books I have ever read' BBC HistoryIn the frontier town of Springfield in 1651, peculiar things begin to happen.
Read by Protestants and Catholics alike, Catharina Regina von Greiffenberg (1633-94) was the foremost German woman poet and writer in the seventeenth-century German-speaking world.
In the study of Shakespeare since the eighteenth century, four key concepts have served to situate Shakespeare in history: chronology, periodization, secularization, and anachronism.
In Jennifer Summit's account, libraries are more than inert storehouses of written tradition; they are volatile spaces that actively shape the meanings and uses of books, reading, and the past.
During the oppressive reign of Louis XIV, Gabrielle Suchon (1632-1703) was the most forceful female voice in France, advocating women's freedom and self-determination, access to knowledge, and assertion of authority.
From Shakespeare's "e;green-eyed monster"e; to the "e;green thought in a green shade"e; in Andrew Marvell's "e;The Garden,"e; the color green was curiously prominent and resonant in English culture of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
An exploration of the censorship of medical books from their proliferation in print through the prohibitions placed on them during the Counter-Reformation.
Among the best-known and most prolific French women writers of the sixteenth century, Madeleine (1520-87) and Catherine (1542-87) des Roches were celebrated not only for their uncommonly strong mother-daughter bond but also for their bold assertion of poetic authority for women in the realm of belles lettres.
Renaissance writer Laura Cereta (1469-1499) presents feminist issues in a predominantly male venue-the humanist autobiography in the form of personal letters.
This book reevaluates the changes to chymistry that took place from 1660 to 1730 through a close study of the chymist Wilhelm Homberg (1653-1715) and the changing fortunes of his discipline at the Academie Royale des Sciences, France's official scientific body.
Between the catastrophic flood of the Tiber River in 1557 and the death of the "e;engineering pope"e; Sixtus V in 1590, the city of Rome was transformed by intense activity involving building construction and engineering projects of all kinds.
Lucrezia Marinella (1571-1653) is, by all accounts, a phenomenon in early modernity: a woman who wrote and published in many genres, whose fame shone brightly within and outside her native Venice, and whose voice is simultaneously original and reflective of her time and culture.
Born Francoise d'Aubigne, a criminal's daughter reduced to street begging as a child, Madame de Maintenon (1653-1719) made an improbable rise from impoverished beginnings to the summit of power as the second, secret wife of Louis XIV.
On August 4, 1578, in an ill-conceived attempt to wrest Morocco back from the hands of the infidel Moors, King Sebastian of Portugal led his troops to slaughter and was himself slain.
Between Copernicus and Galileo is the story of Christoph Clavius, the Jesuit astronomer and teacher whose work helped set the standards by which Galileo's famous claims appeared so radical, and whose teachings guided the intellectual and scientific agenda of the Church in the central years of the Scientific Revolution.
Thanks to her acclaimed volume of poetry and prose published in France in 1555, Louise Labe (1522-66) remains one of the most important and influential women writers of the Continental Renaissance.
Because of their spectacular, naturalistic pictures of plants and the human body, Leonhart Fuchs's De historia stirpium and Andreas Vesalius's De humani corporis fabrica are landmark publications in the history of the printed book.
Focusing on Florence, Thomas Kuehn demonstrates the formative influence of law on Italian society during the Renaissance, especially in the spheres of family and women.
Leo Steinberg was one of the most original and daring art historians of the twentieth century, known for taking interpretative risks that challenged the profession by overturning reigning orthodoxies.
The books in The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe series chronicle the heretofore neglected stories of women between 1400 and 1700 with the aim of reviving scholarly interest in their thought as expressed in a full range of genres: treatises, orations, and history; lyric, epic, and dramatic poetry; novels and novellas; letters, biography, and autobiography; philosophy and science.
The Corporate Commonwealth traces the evolution of corporations during the English Renaissance and explores the many types of corporations that once flourished.
As the news shows us every day, contemporary American culture and politics are rife with people who demonize their enemies by projecting their own failings and flaws onto them.
