Angelica's Book and the World of Reading in Late Renaissance Italy (Cultures of Early Modern Europe) - Hardcover

Brendan Dooley

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 147427031X ISBN 13: 9781474270311

Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016

Synopsis

Through the lens of a history of material culture mediated by an object, Angelica's Book and the World of Reading in Late Renaissance Italy investigates aspects of women's lives, culture, ideas and the history of the book in early modern Italy.

Inside a badly damaged copy of Straparola's 16th-century work, Piacevoli Notti, acquired in a Florentine antique shop in 2010, an inscription is found, attributing ownership to a certain Angelica Baldachini. The discovery sets in motion a series of inquiries, deploying knowledge about calligraphy, orthography, linguistics, dialectology and the socio-psychology of writing, to reveal the person behind the name. Focusing as much on the possible owner as upon the thing owned, Angelica's Book examines the genesis of the Piacevoli Notti and its many editions, including the one in question. The intertwined stories of the book and its owner are set against the backdrop of a Renaissance world, still imperfectly understood, in which literature and reading were subject to regimes of control; and the new information throws aspects of this world into further relief, especially in regard to women's involvement with reading, books and knowledge. The inquiry yields unexpected insights concerning the logic of accidental discovery, the nature of evidence, and the mission of the humanities in a time of global crisis.

Angelica's Book and the World of Reading in Late Renaissance Italy is a thought-provoking read for any scholar of early modern Europe and its culture.

About this title

Review:

"Angelica's Book has considerable charm, and may lure that wide audience of educated but nonspecialist readers that scholarly books seek but often miss ... the prose has a freshness that academic histories tend to lack ... an intriguing and provocative narrative." - Renaissance Quarterly

"Ambitiously inspired ... [The] world of reading in Renaissance Italy ... is deftly fleshed out by informed treatments of topics like the circulation of news, women's book ownership, mnemonic techniques, storytelling practices, and censorship." - Renaissance and Reformation

About the Author:

Brendan Dooley is Professor of Renaissance Studies at University College Cork, Ireland. His numerous publications include A Mattress Maker's Daughter: The Renaissance Romance of Don Giovanni de' Medici and Livia Vernazza (2014), Morandis Last Prophecy and the End of Renaissance Politics (2002) and, as author/ editor, The Dissemination of News and the Emergence of Contemporaneity in Early Modern Europe (2010).

About this edition

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 147427031X
• ISBN 13: 9781474270311
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 216