Conspiracy Literature in Early Renaissance Italy

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marta Celati
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Italian Renaissance ◽  
Literary Genres ◽  
Political Literature ◽  
Narrative Approaches ◽  
Literature History ◽  
Renaissance Italy ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Literary Output

The present work represents the first full-length investigation of Italian Renaissance literature on the topic of conspiracy. This literary output consists of texts belonging to different genres that enjoyed widespread diffusion in the second half of the fifteenth century, when the development of these literary writings proves to be closely connected with the affirmation of a centralized political thought and princely ideology in Italian states. The centrality of the issue of conspiracies in the political and cultural context of the Italian Renaissance emerges clearly also in the sixteenth century in Machiavelli’s work, where the topic is closely interlaced with the problems of building political consensus and the management of power. This monograph focuses on the most significant Quattrocento texts examined as case studies (representative of different states, literary genres, and of both prominent authors—Alberti, Poliziano, Pontano—and minor but important literati) and on Machiavelli’s works where this political theme is particularly pivotal, marking a continuity, but also a turning point, with respect to the preceding authors. Through an interdisciplinary analysis across literature, history, philology and political philosophy, this study traces the evolution of literature on plots in early Renaissance Italy, pointing out the key function of the classical tradition in it, and the recurring narrative approaches, historiographical techniques, and ideological angles that characterize the literary transfiguration of the topic. This investigation also offers a reconsideration and re-definition of the complex facets of fifteenth-century political literature, which played a crucial role in the development of a new theory of statecraft.

The Conspiracy Against the Prince

2020 ◽  
pp. 190-211
Author(s):  
Marta Celati
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Historical Event ◽  
Political Realism ◽  
Common People ◽  
Distinctive Features ◽  
Narrative Approaches ◽  
Classical Models ◽  
Definition Of

The chapter offers a comparative study that traces the evolution of fifteenth-century conspiracy literature, illustrating its distinctive features, narrative approaches, and political perspectives. The analysis focuses on the multiform operation of recasting classical models, which matches and, at the same time, underpins the ideological viewpoint in these texts. Specific attention is also paid to the multifunctional role of history in this literature, as it exploits historical narrative, historiographical techniques, and principles, in order to construct a historical memory that conveys a precise political message. This message coincides with the condemnation of the conspiracy as an attack against the state and the ‘prince’, who is now the dominant figure in the political discourse. The key elements that frame this political outlook in the texts are: the function of the author–narrator (as a poet, letter writer, historian, witness); the speeches delivered by historical characters; the stress on the exceptionality of the historical event; the portraits of the conspirators; the representation of the common people; the image of the revenge against the plotters; and the uneasy balance between clemency and vengeance in the ruler’s reaction to the conspiracy. Through the interplay of these components the texts reflect, and contribute to, the development of a theory of statecraft that is informed by a blossoming notion of political realism and plays a crucial role in the definition of a new model of state. Significantly this strand of political thought also emerged in mirrors for princes, which display many elements in common with works on plots.

Architects and Engineers

2014 ◽  
pp. 48-64
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Practical Knowledge ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Italian Renaissance ◽  
Theoretical Knowledge ◽  
Ancient Rome ◽  
The Core ◽  
Modern Age ◽  
Definition Of

As designers, architects, and engineers are united by their commitment to technological thinking with the ultimate end of their productions being determined, not by the architects and engineers themselves, but by the consumers and users of the products that they visualize. Thus, prudential and practical considerations distinguish architects from artists and engineers from scientists, but the purely formal intellectual values of beauty and truth, enjoyed by artists and scientists respectively, tend to haunt architects and engineers and inform their personalities and dreams. Equally important is the fact that the ideals of beauty and truth tend to separate architects from engineers. A typology of contrast is evident here. Yet, because both these occupations share an identity as designers, it is necessary for scholars to merge architects and engineers conceptually. The first architectural theorist, Vitruvius in ancient Rome, argued that architects need to possess both theoretical knowledge and practical knowledge – that is, art or science and technology – and it is clear that Vitruvius’s definition of an architect would include what we call an engineer. Vitruvius had an immense influence on architectural thinking, which for many centuries emphasized his ideals of beauty at the expense of practicality. This tendency is evident in both the works of the Italian Renaissance in the fifteenth century and later the Beaux Arts tradition in France that lasted until the twentieth century when function replaced form as the core value of architecture. At the same time in the modern age, engineers split apart from architects and established an independent profession.

Features and Discussion Aspects of the Concepts of Occasion and Event

2021 ◽  
pp. 223-227
Author(s):  
Liliia Syrota
Keyword(s):  
Research Methods ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Scientific Research ◽  
Organizational Aspect ◽  
General Scientific ◽  
Definition Of

The purpose of the article is to compare worldview, philosophical and scientific approaches to the definition of the concepts of celebration and event.  To suggest your own definition of the event. Methodology. The author uses general scientific research methods (analysis, synthesis, systematization, comparison, opposition, description, specification). The article also based on semantic, functional research methods. The scientific novelty. The concept of “down” is the closest in meaning to the event In the socio-cultural context, since it has the organizational aspect (the stage of preparation, conduct) that dominates the event. Conclusions. An event is a set of steps/actions aimed at creating family, corporate or official mass meetings. It has always been aimed at the development and implementation of a service.

The Opposite of Custom

2021 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 59-78
Author(s):  
M. Christina Bruno
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Canon Law ◽  
Conspicuous Consumption ◽  
Moral Theology ◽  
Economic Behavior ◽  
Definition Of

Fifteenth-century Italian urban and ecclesiastical authorities sought to regulate the laity’s conspicuous consumption of dress, sometimes resulting in canon law petitions for exemption on the grounds of custom. By exploiting an ambivalent definition of custom according to status, wealthy men and especially women successfully sidestepped regulation. Critics of luxury such as the Franciscan Observants, who encountered similar arguments in confession, countered this permissive understanding of custom with alternate criteria for determining proper dress tied to the morality of the economic behavior that made luxurious dress possible. Overlapping definitions of custom drawn from canon law and moral theology thus provided both fashionable people and their confessors a way to negotiate and contest their status.

The Fonte Gaia from Renaissance to Modern Times

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chiara E. Scappini ◽  
David Boffa
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Italian Renaissance ◽  
Art And Politics ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
History Of

The Fonte Gaia from Renaissance to Modern Times examines the history of Siena's famous public fountain, from its fifteenth-century origins to its eventual replacement by a copy in the nineteenth century (and the modern fate of both). The book explores how both the Risorgimento and the Symbolist movements have shaped our perceptions of the Italian Renaissance, as the Quattrocento was filtered through the lens of contemporary art and politics.

The Will of Cardinal Giordano Orsini (ob. 1438)

Traditio ◽  
1996 ◽  
Vol 51 ◽  
pp. 257-286 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher S. Celenza
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Italian Renaissance ◽  
Short Introduction ◽  
Renaissance Humanism ◽  
The Third ◽  
Textual History ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Will ◽  
First Time

There are many still unstudied aspects of the cultural history of early Quattrocento Rome, especially if we consider the years before 1443, the date of the more or less permanent re-entry into the civitas aeterna of Pope Eugenius IV. The nexus between the still ephemeral papacy and the emerging intellectual movement of Italian Renaissance humanism is one of these aspects. It is hoped that this study will shed some light on this problem by presenting a document that has hitherto not been completely edited: the original will of Cardinal Giordano Orsini. As we shall see, this important witness to the fifteenth century provides valuable information on many fronts, even on the structure of the old basilica of Saint Peter. The short introduction is in three parts. The first has a discussion of the cardinal's cultural milieu with a focus on the only contemporary treatise specifically about curial culture, Lapo da Castiglionchio's De curiae commodis. The second part addresses the textual history of the will as well as some misconceptions which have surrounded it. The third part contains a discussion of the will itself, along with some preliminary observations about what can be learned from the critical edition of the text here presented for the first time.

Postscript: charismatic things and social transaction in Renaissance Italy

Urban History ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 474-482
Author(s):  
THOMAS V. COHEN ◽  
ELIZABETH S. COHEN
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Production ◽  
Urban Culture ◽  
New Age ◽  
Italian Renaissance ◽  
Low Countries ◽  
Work Of Art ◽  
Cultural Products ◽  
The World ◽  
Renaissance Italy ◽  
The Individual

In 1860, Jacob Burckhardt published his view, still influential today, of an artful, urban Italian Renaissance that launched Europe on its passage to modernity. A lively revisionary scholarship has challenged Burckhardt on many points, but his famous formulae still resonate: the state as work of art; the development of the individual; the discovery of the world and of man. Although we now know that Italy did not alone invent the new age, it was for many years a trendsetter, especially in the domains of cultural production at the centre of this collection of essays. Republican and princely polities alike framed these developments, but, whoever ruled, Italy's unusually intense urbanization (paired with that in another well-spring of culture in the Low Countries) fostered innovation. In Renaissance cities, people and groups invested heavily in special actions, objects and places – charismatic cultural products empowered by holiness, beauty, fame and ingenuity – that fortified solidarity and resilience in uncertain times. This essay collection addresses a conjunction of urban culture and society distinctive to Renaissance Italy: an array of encounters of artifacts with ways of living in community.

Arms and Letters: Julius Caesar, theCommentariesof Pope Pius II, and the Politicization of Papal Imagery*

2009 ◽  
Vol 62 (4) ◽  
pp. 1057-1097 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily O'Brien
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Italian Renaissance ◽  
Julius Caesar

AbstractIn their title, theCommentariesof Pope Pius II recall the works of Julius Caesar by the same name. The connections between these ancient and humanist histories, however, run much deeper. This article explores this relationship in detail and in the broader historical and historiographical contexts of fifteenth-century Italy. It argues that in both Caesar's histories and in his career more generally, Pius found much that resonated with his own experiences, challenges, and goals. More importantly, he found in these ancientCommentariesvaluable apologetic strategies for constructing his own textual self-portrait as both pope and prince. In choosing Caesar's histories as his models, Pius was following a recent historiographical precedent. Several Italian Renaissance humanists had also turned to Caesar's works as guides for writing histories about leaders of contemporary temporal politics. This article argues that by adopting the same models when shaping his own image, Pius was effectively politicizing his self-portrait in hisCommentaries.

scholarly journals And That is Where the Fun Ends – General Practitioners’ Conceptualisation of the Line between Recreational and Problem Gambling

2014 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Dieter Egerer ◽  
Virve Marionneau
Keyword(s):  
Problem Gambling ◽  
General Practitioners ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Medical Model ◽  
Online Gambling ◽  
Group Method ◽  
Gambling Behaviour ◽  
Cultural Variations ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Individual

AbstractAIMS – Problem gambling is normally identified by fixed criteria of harm adapted from those of substance abuse and by focusing on the individual gambler. However, rigid definitions neglect institutional variations of gambling practices within different legislative configurations. This study proposes analysing the line between recreational and problem gambling by focusing on gambling behaviour and looking at the corruption of the defining factors of play (Caillois, 1958) in three different institutional contexts. DESIGN – A stimulated focus-group method (Reception Analytical Group Interview) was applied to seven groups of Finnish and French general practitioners each and three groups of German ones to study the variations of conceptualising the defining factors of play as introduced by Caillois. RESULTS – Corruption of play was distinguished by participants from all three countries as the dividing line between recreational and problem gambling, but cultural variations were found: the French and German GPs emphasised the loss of the exceptionality of gambling, whereas the Finnish GPs highlighted the invasion of the home by online gambling. Furthermore, the Finnish and German participants were more concerned about the use of gambling as an emotional regulator, while French GPs echoed the French medical model in discussing the adrenaline rush of problem gamblers. CONCLUSIONS – Caillois’ defining factors of play can be used to distinguish recreational from problem gambling and to offer a more encompassing definition of problem gambling. The perception of the line between recreational and problem gambling also seems to depend on the institutional and cultural context.

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