This volume offers the first critical edition of and thorough introduction to one of medieval Naples’ most notable expressions of local memory and identity and a foundational text in the subsequent development of Neapolitan historiography.

Giovanni Villani’s New Chronicle traces the history of Europe, Italy, and Florence over a vast sweep of time – from the Tower of Babel to the great earthquake of 1348. In the eleventh and twelfth books, Villani depicts a particularly eventful period in the history of Florence, whose grandeur is illustrated in several famous chapters describing the city’s income, expenses, and magnificence. The dramatic account follows Florence’s internal affairs as well as its conflicts with powerful lords like Castruccio Castracani and Mastino della Scala. The chronicler’s perspective, however, ranges beyond his city, as he documents such events as the imperial coronation of Louis of Bavaria, the penitential pilgrimage of Venturino da Bergamo, and the first campaigns of the Hundred Year’s War.

This volume traces the work of trecento historians of the Mezzogiorno, analyzing it through current methodological and theoretical frameworks. Questioning the current consensus, the book examines how the South as a cultural "other" began evolving over the fourteenth century, and reconsiders the nineteenth-century "Southern Question" concerning the Mezzogiorno’s history, culture and people and its lingering negative image in Europe and America. It also focuses on specific histories, authors and historiographical issues, and reviews how new understandings of the Mediterranean have begun to alter our perceptions of the South in a new global context and as the basis for new historical research.

In the early Middle Ages, Italy became the target of Muslim expansionist campaigns. The Muslims conquered Sicily, ruling there for more than two centuries, and conducted many raids against the Italian Peninsula. During this period, however, Christians and Muslims were not always at war – trade flourished, and travel to the territories of the ‘other’ was not uncommon. By examining how Muslims and Christians perceived each other and how they communicated, this book brings the relationship between Muslims and Christians in early medieval Italy into clearer focus, showing that the followers of the Cross and those of the Crescent were in reality not as ignorant of one another as is commonly believed.

"Illustrated with some two hundred photographs and reconstruction drawings of cathedrals, monasteries, and other monuments, this volume sets Angevin architecture in the larger context of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Europe, while underscoring the unique character of the buildings constructed by the French kings of Naples."--Jacket.

Medieval Italy: Texts in Translation gathers together, for the first time in one volume, newly translated primary sources critical to the study of the Italian Middle Ages, ca. 1000-1400 C.E. What makes this volume unique, too, is its incorporation of the southern part of the peninsula and Sicily into a larger narrative of Italian history.

A Companion to the Renaissance in Southern Italy offers readers unfamiliar with Southern Italy an introduction to different aspects of the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century history and culture of this vast and significant area of Europe, situated at the center of the Mediterranean. Commonly regarded as a backward, rural region untouched by the Italian Renaissance, the essays in this volume paint a rather different picture. The expert-written contributions present a general survey of the most recent research on the centers of southern Italy, as well as insight into the ground-breaking debates on wider themes, such as the definition of the city, continuity and discontinuity at the turn of the sixteenth century, and the effects of dynastic changes from the Angevin and Aragonese Kingdom to the Spanish Viceroyalty. Taken together, they form an essential resource on an important, yet all too often overlooked or misunderstood part of Renaissance Italy. Contributors: Giancarlo Abbamonte, David Abulafia, Guido Cappelli, Chiara De Caprio, Bianca de Divitiis, Fulvio Delle Donne, Teresa D’Urso, Dinko Fabris, Guido Giglioni, Antonietta Iacono, Fulvio Lenzo, Lorenzo Miletti, Francesco Montuori, Pasquale Palmieri, Eleni Sakellariou, Francesco Senatore, Francesco Storti, Pierluigi Terenzi, Carlo Vecce, Giuliana Vitale, and Andrea Zezza.

Investigating the interrelationships between orality and writing in elite and popular textual culture in early modern Italy, this volume shows how the spoken or sung word on the one hand, and manuscript or print on the other hand, could have interdependent or complementary roles to play in the creation and circulation of texts. The first part of the book centres on performances, ranging from realizations of written texts to improvisations or semi-improvisations that might draw on written sources and might later be committed to paper. Case studies examine the poems sung in the piazza that narrated contemporary warfare, commedia dell'arte scenarios, and the performative representation of the diverse spoken languages of Italy. The second group of essays studies the influence of speech on the written word and reveals that, as fourteenth-century Tuscan became accepted as a literary standard, contemporary non-standard spoken languages were seen to possess an immediacy that made them an effective resource within certain kinds of written communication. The third part considers the roles of orality in the worlds of the learned and of learning. The book as a whole demonstrates that the borderline between orality and writing was highly permeable and that the culture of the period, with its continued reliance on orality alongside writing, was often hybrid in nature.

This text presents a comparative, historical account of vowel prosthesis in the Romance languages. The author describes in detail the formal characteristics, historical trajectory, and likely causes of the different types of prosthesis operating in Romance.

This edited collection focuses on how the ancient past of the city of Naples has been invented, shaped, transmitted, and received in literature, art, and material culture since the time of the city's foundation. Adopting a chronological approach, chapters examine important moments in Naples' reception history from the Roman period (when the city was already several centuries old) to the present day. Among the topics covered are representations of the city's early history and mythology in texts and temples of the Roman period; later uses of Roman spolia (marble sculptures and architectural elements) in Christian churches; the importance of antiquity to the rulers of the Angevin and Swabian periods; the appropriation of the city's classical heritage by Renaissance humanists; the image of the 'local' poets Virgil and Statius in later eras; humanist images of the ancient aqueducts and catacombs that ran beneath the city; representations of classical monuments in early modern city guides; images of ancient ruins in contemporary Catholic nativity scenes; and the archaeology and philosophy of the city's Metro system. Featuring contributions from an interdisciplinary range of scholars, this comprehensive volume provides a highly accessible point of entry into the vast bibliography on ancient Naples.