The Italian Renaissance

Virginia Cox is Senior Research Fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge and Honorary Professor of Early Modern Italian Literature and Culture. A fellow of the British Academy, she is a three-time recipient of the Renaissance Society of America's William Nelson Prize. Her five monographs include The Renaissance Dialogue  and Women's Writing in Italy, 1400 – 1650.

Praise for the first edition: 'Virginia Cox makes the text and its contents comprehensible and well-befitting the required reading list of nascent students of the period …. Her prose is particularly well suited to those with little or no familiarity with the topic. However, her outstanding overall examination of the Italian Renaissance will also spark the interest of seasoned enthusiasts and fellow scholars.' Italian Culture

• List of Illustrations; Preface and Acknowledgements page; Introduction; 1. What? When? Where? Whose?; 1.1 Rebirth; 1.2 Cultural Geography; 1.3 When Was the Renaissance?; 1.4 Whose Was the Renaissance?; 2. The Renaissance and the Ancient; 2.1 The Birth of Humanism; 2.2 Humanism and Scholasticism; 2.3 The Material Renaissance; 2.4 The Artistic Renaissance; 2.5 Humanism and Christianity; 2.6 Strategies of Conciliation: Allegory and Syncretism; 2.7 Strategies of Conciliation: Double Truth; 2.8 Pandora's Jar: The Dangers of 'Ancient Things'; 2.9 Conclusion; 3. The Renaissance and the Modern; 3.1 The Past Reinvented; 3.2 A Changing World; 3.3 The 'Discovery of the World and of Man'; 3.4 Mapping the World: Geography and Cartography; 3.5 Mapping Man: Dissection and Anatomy; 3.6 Vasari and the Progress of Art; 3.7 Culture and Technology: The Impact of Print; 4. Identity and the Self; 4.1 Renaissance Individualism Revisited; 4.2 (Self ) Portrait of a Lady: Isabella d'Este; 4.3 Identity and Performance; 4.4 The Social Dynamics of Individualism; 4.5 Self-Fashioning beyond the Elites; 5. Renaissance Man; 5.1 Renaissance Man / Renaissance Men; 5.2 Renaissance Men: The Merchant; 5.3 Renaissance Men: The Courtier; 5.4 Renaissance Men: The Artist; 5.5 The Other Artists: The Virtuosi of the Courts; 5.6 Crafts and Craftsmen: Renaissance Man at Work; 6. Renaissance Woman; 6.1 Gender and Society in Renaissance Italy; 6.2 Rethinking Woman; 6.3 Depicting the New Woman; 6.4 Beyond the Courts; 6.5 The Courtesan as Renaissance Woman; 6.6 Renaissance Women and the Arts; 6.7 Depicting the Virtuosa; 6.8 The Renaissance in the Cloisters; 6.9 Women Rethinking Women; 6.10 Conclusion: The Female Renaissance; 7. The Italian Renaissance beyond Italy; 7.1 The World in Italy / Italy in the World; 7.2 The Renaissance beyond Italy; 7.3 The Renaissance beyond Europe; 7.4 'Renaissance Men'? The Jesuits in Asia; 7.5 The Renaissance Travelling 'I'; 7.6 Conclusion: Adventures in Persian; 8. Conclusion: Reintegrating the Renaissance; Bibliography; Index.