Languages of Power in Italy
Publisher: Brepols Publishers
Published: Nov 21, 2017
Language: eng
Format: hardcover
Number of pages: 245
ISBN-13: 9782503540382
Description: The essays in this collection explore the languages artistic, symbolic, and ritual, as well as written and spoken in which power was articulated, challenged, contested, and defended in Italian cities and courts, villages, and countryside, between 1300 and 1600. Topics addressed include court ceremonial, gossip and insult, the performance of sanctity and public devotions, the appropriation and reuse of imagery, and the calculated invocation (and sometimes undermining) of authoritative models and figures. The collection balances a broad geographic and chronological range with a tight thematic focus, allowing the individual contributions to engage in vigorous and fruitful debate with one another even as they speak to some of the central issues in current scholarship. The authors recognize that every institutional action is, in its context, a political act, and that no institution operates disinterestedly. At the same time, they insist on the inadequacy of traditional models, whether Marxian or Weberian, as the complex realities of the early modern state pose tough problems for any narrative of modernization, rationalization, and centralization.
Notes: Source title: Languages of Power in Italy (1300-1600) (Early European Research)