"The Roman singer, courtesan, and writer Margherita Costa won prominence and fame across the courts of Italy and France during the mid-seventeenth century. She secured a steady stream of elite patrons--including popes, queens, grand dukes, and influential cardinals --while male poets and librettists wrote celebratory poetry on her behalf. In addition to her appearances as a soprano on the opera stage, Costa published a remarkable fourteen full-length texts across an expanse of genres: burlesque comedy, drama, equestrian ballet, pastoral opera, amorous letters, lyric poetry, and history. Margherita Costa, Diva of the Baroque Court brings together close textual readings of Costa's numerous publications with archival materials detailing her performance itinerary and social-cultural networks. The book progresses chronologically through her life, geographically along the routes she travelled, and thematically via the genres in which she experimented. Jessica Goethals illuminates how Costa was unafraid to leap over the boundaries of decorum that delimited what women should and did write about. More than merely a literary biography, this book is also a portrait of seventeenth-century courts, their concerns, and their entertainments."--

The Roman singer, courtesan, and writer Margherita Costa won prominence and fame across the courts of Italy and France during the mid-seventeenth century. She secured a steady stream of elite patrons – including popes, queens, grand dukes, and influential cardinals – while male poets and librettists wrote celebratory poetry on her behalf. In addition to her appearances as a soprano on the opera stage, Costa published a remarkable fourteen full-length texts across an expanse of genres: burlesque comedy, drama, equestrian ballet, pastoral opera, amorous letters, lyric poetry, and history. Margherita Costa, Diva of the Baroque Court brings together close textual readings of Costa’s numerous publications with archival materials detailing her performance itinerary and social-cultural networks. The book progresses chronologically through her life, geographically along the routes she travelled, and thematically via the genres in which she experimented. Jessica Goethals illuminates how Costa was unafraid to leap over the boundaries of decorum that delimited what women should and did write about. More than merely a literary biography, this book is also a portrait of seventeenth-century courts, their concerns, and their entertainments.

Redreaming the Renaissance seeks to remedy the dearth of conversations between scholars of history and literary studies by building on the pathbreaking work of Guido Ruggiero to explore the cross-fertilization between these two disciplines, using the textual world of the Italian Renaissance as proving ground. In this volume, these disciplines blur, as they did for early moderns, who did not always distinguish between the historical and literary significance of the texts they read and produced. Literature here is broadly conceived to include not only belles lettres, but also other forms of artful writing that flourished in the period, including philosophical writings on dreams and prophecy; life-writing; religious debates; menu descriptions and other food writing; diaries, news reports, ballads, and protest songs; and scientific discussions. The twelve essays in this collection examine the role that the volume’s dedicatee has played in bringing the disciplines of history and literary studies into provocative conversation, as well as the methodology needed to sustain and enrich this conversation.

Saint Birgitta of Sweden (d. 1373), one of the most famous visionary women of the late Middle Ages, lived in Rome for the last 23 years of her life. Much of her extensive literary work was penned there. Her Celestial Revelations circulated widely from the late 14th century to the 17th century, copied in Italian scriptoria, translated into vernacular, and printed in several Latin and Italian editions. In the same centuries, an extraordinary number of women writers across the peninsula were publishing their work. What echoes might we find of the foreign widow’s prophetic voice in their texts? This volume offers innovative investigations, written by an interdisciplinary group of experts, of the profound impact of Birgitta of Sweden in Renaissance Italy. Contributors include: Brian Richardson, Jane Tylus, Isabella Gagliardi, Clara Stella, Marco Faini, Jessica Goethals, Anna Wainwright, Eleonora Cappuccilli, Eleonora Carinci, Virginia Cox, Unn Falkeid, and Silvia Nocentini.

Who were the first celebrity couples? How was their success forged? Which forces influenced their self-fashioning and marketing strategies? These questions are at the core of this study, which looks at the birth of a phenomenon, that of the couple in show business, with a focus on the promotional strategies devised by two professional performers: Giovan Battista Andreini (1576–1654) and Virginia Ramponi (1583–ca.1631). This book examines their artistic path – a deliberately crafted and mutually beneficial joint career – and links it to the historical, social, and cultural context of post-Tridentine Italy. Rooted in a broad research field, encompassing theatre history, Italian studies, celebrity studies, gender studies, and performance studies, The Theatre Couple in Early Modern Italy revises the conventional view of the Italian diva, investigates the deployment of Catholic devotion as a marketing tool, and argues for the importance of the couple system in the history of Commedia dell’Arte, a system that continues to shape celebrity today.

A reassessment of how the legacy of ancient philosophy functioned in early modern Europe In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle affirms that despite his friendship with Plato, he was a better friend of the truth. With this statement, he rejected his teacher's authority, implying that the pursuit of philosophy does not entail any such obedience. Yet over the centuries Aristotle himself became the authority par excellence in the Western world, and even notorious anti-Aristotelians such as Galileo Galilei preferred to keep him as a friend rather than to contradict him openly. In Early Modern Aristotle, Eva Del Soldato contends that because the authority of Aristotle—like that of any other ancient, including Plato—was a construct, it could be tailored and customized to serve agendas that were often in direct contrast to one another, at times even in open conflict with the very tenets of Peripatetic philosophy. Arguing that recourse to the principle of authority was not merely an instrument for inculcating minds with an immutable body of knowledge, Del Soldato investigates the ways in which the authority of Aristotle was exploited in a variety of contexts. The stories the five chapters tell often develop along the same chronological lines, and reveal consistent diachronic and synchronic patterns. Each focuses on strategies of negotiation, integration and rejection of Aristotle, considering both macro-phenomena, such as the philosophical genre of the comparatio (that is, a comparison of Aristotle and Plato's lives and doctrines), and smaller-scale receptions, such as the circulation of legends, anecdotes, fictions, and rhetorical tropes ("if Aristotle were alive . . ."), all featuring Aristotle as their protagonist. Through the analysis of surprisingly neglected episodes in intellectual history, Early Modern Aristotle traces how the authority of the ancient philosopher—constantly manipulated and negotiated—shaped philosophical and scientific debate in Europe from the fifteenth century until the dawn of the Enlightenment.

"In this elegantly constructed study of the early decades of public opera, the conflicts and cooperation of poets, composers, managers, designers, and singers—producing the art form that was soon to sweep the world and that has been dominant ever since—are revealed in their first freshness."—Andrew Porter "This will be a standard work on the subject of the rise of Venetian opera for decades. Rosand has provided a decisive contribution to the reshaping of the entire subject. . . . She offers a profoundly new view of baroque opera based on a solid documentary and historical-critical foundation. The treatment of the artistic self-consciousness and professional activities of the librettists, impresarios, singers, and composers is exemplary, as is the examination of their reciprocal relations. This work will have a positive effect not only on studies of 17th-century, but on the history of opera in general."—Lorenzo Bianconi

A groundbreaking academic treatment of Fellini, provides new, expansive, and diverse perspectives on his films and influence The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Federico Fellini presents new methodologies and fresh insights for encountering, appreciating, and contextualizing the director’s films in the 21st century. A milestone in Fellini scholarship, this volume provides contributions by leading scholars, intellectuals, and filmmakers, as well as insights from collaborators and associates of the Italian director. Scholarly yet readable essays explore the fundamental aspects of Fellini’s works while addressing their contemporary relevance in contexts ranging from politics and the environment to gender, race, and sexual orientation. As the centennial of Federico Fellini’s birth in approaches in 2020, this timely work provides new readings of Fellini’s films and illustrates Fellini’s importance as a filmmaker, artist,and major cultural figure. The text explores topics such as Fellini’s early cinematic experience, recurring themes and patterns in his films, his collaborations and influences, and his unique forms of cinematic expression. In a series of “Short Takes” sections, contributors look at specific films that have particular significance or personal relevance. Destined to become the standard research tool for Fellini studies, this volume: Offers new theoretical frameworks, encounters, critiques, and interpretations of Fellini’s work Discusses Fellini’s creativity outside of filmmaking, such as his graphic art and his Book of Dreams published after his death. Examines Fellini’s influence on artists not only in the English-speaking world but in places such as Turkey, Japan, South Asia, Russia, Cuba, North Africa. Demonstrates the interrelationship between Fellini’s work and visual art, literature, fashion, marketing, and many other dimensions of both popular and high culture. Features personal testimonies from family, friends and associates of Fellini such as Francesca Fabbri Fellini, Gianfranco Angelucci, Valeria Ciangottini, and Lina Wertmüller Includes an extensive appendix of freely accessible archival resources on Fellini’s work The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Federico Fellini is an indispensable resource for students, instructors, and scholars of Fellini, Italian cinema, cinema and art history, and all areas of film and media studies.

A collection of essays by the art historian Aby Warburg, these essays look beyond iconography to more psychological aspects of artistic creation: the conditions under which art was practised; its social and cultural contexts; and its conceivable historical meaning.

This book contains expansive, multifaceted narrative of British women's literary and textual production from the Reformation to the Restoration.