Power and Imagination: City-states in Renaissance Italy

Power and Imagination: City-states in Renaissance Italy

by Lauro Martines (Author)

Synopsis

The Italian Renaissance, writes Lauro Martines, came forth in two stages. The first extended from the eleventh century to about 1300, the second from the late thirteenth to the late sixteenth centuries. In the first period, social energies - economics, politics, a vibrant demography - were primary and foremost; in the second, cultural energies seemed to dominate. In Power and Imagination, Lauro Martines rethinks the evolution of the city-state in Renaissance Italy and recasts the conventional distinction between 'society' and 'culture'. He traces the growth of commerce and the evolution of governments; he describes the attitudes, pleasures and rituals of the ruling elite; he seeks to understand the period's towering works of the imagination in literature, painting, city planning and philosophy - not simply as the creations of individual artists, but as the formal expression of the ambitions and egos of those in power.

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More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 384
Edition: New edition
Publisher: Pimlico
Published: 02 May 2002

ISBN 10: 0712668195
ISBN 13: 9780712668194
Book Overview: The definitive work on power relationships within Renaissance Italy. Social history rather than yet another examination of cultural artefacts.

Media Reviews
'A brilliant study. Martines takes a new and refreshing look at the political, social and economic sources of the extraordinary explosion of expression in art and scholarship which made Italy the model for Europe.', Los Angeles Times
Author Bio
Born in Chicago of Italian descent, Lauro Martines gained his Ph.D. from Harvard University, and is a former Professor of European History at the University of California. He has spent several years in Florence and is now resident in London. He is currently working on a new book, April Blood, for Cape.