An alternative history of the Renaissance—as seen through the emerging literature of beauty tips—focusing on the actresses, authors, and courtesans who rebelled against the misogyny of their era. Beauty, make-up, art, power: How to Be a Renaissance Woman presents an alternative history of this fascinating period as told by the women behind the paintings, providing a window into their often overlooked or silenced lives. Can the pressures women feel to look good be traced back to the sixteenth century? As the Renaissance visual world became populated by female nudes from the likes of Michelangelo and Titian, a vibrant literary scene of beauty tips emerged, fueling debates about cosmetics and adornment. Telling the stories of courtesans, artists, actresses, and writers rebelling against the strictures of their time, when burgeoning colonialism gave rise to increasingly sinister evaluations of bodies and skin color, this book puts beauty culture into the frame. How to Be a Renaissance Woman will take readers from bustling Italian market squares, the places where the poorest women and immigrant communities influenced cosmetic products and practices, to the highest echelons of Renaissance society, where beauty could be a powerful weapon in securing strategic marriages and family alliances. It will investigate how skin-whitening practices shifted in step with the emerging sub-Saharan African slave trade, how fads for fattening and thinning diets came and went, and how hairstyles and fashion could be a tool for dissent and rebellion—then as now. This surprising and illuminating narrative will make you question your ideas about your own body, and ask: Why are women often so critical of their appearance? What do we stand to lose, but also to gain, from beauty culture? What is the relationship between looks and power?

An invaluable collection of primary sources on women and femininity in early modern England, including medical documents, political pamphlets, sermons and literary sources. Sources are accompanied by a clear introduction and notes.

Gwyn and Michelle time-travel to Renaissance Italy: they must deal with the corruption and nepotism of the Borgia Pope and his murderous family.

A biography of Vittoria Colonna, confidante of Michelangelo, scion of one of the most powerful families of her era, and a pivotal figure in the Italian Renaissance Ramie Targoff’s Renaissance Woman tells of the most remarkable woman of the Italian Renaissance: Vittoria Colonna, Marchesa of Pescara. Vittoria has long been celebrated by scholars of Michelangelo as the artist’s best friend—the two of them exchanged beautiful letters, poems, and works of art that bear witness to their intimacy—but she also had close ties to Charles V, Pope Clement VII and Pope Paul III, Pietro Bembo, Baldassare Castiglione, Pietro Aretino, Queen Marguerite de Navarre, Reginald Pole, and Isabella d’Este, among others. Vittoria was the scion of an immensely powerful family in Rome during that city’s most explosively creative era. Art and literature flourished, but political and religious life were under terrific strain. Personally involved with nearly every major development of this period—through both her marriage and her own talents—Vittoria was not only a critical political actor and negotiator but also the first woman to publish a book of poems in Italy, an event that launched a revolution for Italian women’s writing. Vittoria was, in short, at the very heart of what we celebrate when we think about sixteenth-century Italy; through her story the Renaissance comes to life anew.

Explores why some early modern writers put their masculine literary authority at risk by writing from the perspective of femininity and effeminacy. The text argues that such work promoted alternatives to the dominant patriarchal aesthetics by celebrating unruly female and effeminate male bodies.

Readings in Renaissance Women's Drama is the most complete sourcebook for the study of this growing area of inquiry. It brings together, for the first time, a collection of the key critical commentaries and historical essays - both classic and contemporary - on Renaissance women's drama. Specifically designed to provide a comprehensive overview for students, teachers and scholars, this collection combines: * this century's key critical essays on drama by early modern women by early critics such as Virginia Woolf and T.S. Eliot * specially-commissioned new essays by some of today's important feminist critics * a preface and introduction explaining this selection and contexts of the materials * a bibliography of secondary sources Playwrights covered include Joanna Lumley, Elizabeth Cary, Mary Sidney, Mary Wroth and the Cavendish sisters.

Demonstrating how struggles over gender and class were mediated through formal properties of writing, The Rhetoric of Concealment offers a new framework for the discussion of court literature and middle-class literature in the English Renaissance. Rosemary Kegl offers powerful readings of works by Puttenham, Sidney, Shakespeare, and Deloney and considers an array of other texts including journals, gynecological and obstetrical writings, misogynist tracts, defenses of women, prescriptive literature on companionate marriage, royal proclamations, legal records, and town charters.

A New Companion to Renaissance Drama provides an invaluable summary of past and present scholarship surrounding the most popular and influential literary form of its time. Original interpretations from leading scholars set the scene for important paths of future inquiry. A colorful, comprehensive and interdisciplinary overview of the material conditions of Renaissance plays, England's most important dramatic period Contributors are both established and emerging scholars, with many leading international figures in the discipline Offers a unique approach by organizing the chapters by cultural context, theatre history, genre studies, theoretical applications, and material studies Chapters address newest departures and future directions for Renaissance drama scholarship Arthur Kinney is a world-renowned figure in the field

Renaissance Theory presents an animated conversation among art historians about the optimal ways of conceptualizing Renaissance art, and the links between Renaissance art and contemporary art and theory. This is the first discussion of its kind, involving not only questions within Renaissance scholarship, but issues of concern to art historians and critics in all fields. Organized as a virtual roundtable discussion, the contributors discuss rifts and disagreements about how to understand the Renaissance and debate the principal texts and authors of the last thirty years who have sought to reconceptualize the period. They then turn to the issue of the relation between modern art and the Renaissance: Why do modern art historians and critics so seldom refer to the Renaissance? Is the Renaissance our indispensable heritage, or are we cut off from it by the revolution of modernism? The volume includes an introduction by Rebecca Zorach and two final, synoptic essays, as well as contributions from some of the most prominent thinkers on Renaissance art including Stephen Campbell, Michael Cole, Frederika Jakobs, Claire Farago, and Matt Kavaler.