This study investigates a repertoire of eighteen madrigals whose texts refer to heraldry, all of which were composed in trecento Italy. The hereditary and personal arms cited in the song texts are those of the Visconti, Della Scala and Carrara families of northern Italy. Though these madrigals have been used in the past as a means for dating manuscripts and reconstructing composer biographies, they have never been studied as a discrete repertoire. This study applies musicological, heraldic and art historical approaches to the repertoire in order to investigate the heraldic madrigal as a manifestation of political authority in trecento Italy. Part One offers background information necessary to the understanding of the heraldic madrigal repertoire. Chapter 1 presents a glossary of heraldic terminology, and an overview of the role of heraldry in late medieval life, art and literature, focusing on heraldry as a means of representing ideas of authority and identity in the late Middle Ages. Chapter 2 defines the heraldic madrigal and discusses the stylistic features unique to this repertoire. This chapter also considers the heraldic madrigal in the context of contemporary musical repertoires such as the Italian motet and the songs of the French ars subtilior. Chapter 3 presents a critical edition of heraldic madrigal texts with translations. Part Two consists of case studies. Chapter 4 explores the link between Jacopo da Bologna’s madrigal Aquila altera and the references to the Holy Trinity in the heraldry of its dedicatees, Giangaleazzo Visconti and Isabelle de Valois. Chapter 5 offers a re-evaluation of the poem La fiera testa, challenging the common opinion that the text is condemnatory. Chapter 6 considers non-musical models for the the madrigal texts Inperiale sedendo and Per quella strada, based on manuscripts owned by and dedicated to the Carrara family. The Conclusion of this study touches briefly on the legacy of the heraldic madrigal, giving a summary of later Italian songs containing references to the heraldry of noble families, such as the Malatesta and Medici.

This thesis studies lithic landscapes and taskscapes from an explicit perspective of social practice. It explores the spatial and temporal dimensions of the three main interlocking lithic activities: procurement, production and use/discard. Five key concepts are used to explore human choice and interaction in these three fields: practice, knowledge, skill, strategy and tradition. Sardinia and the obsidian artefacts from the Riu Mannu Survey Project data have served as a case study. My research approach was developed to gain an understanding of the spatial and temporal developments of Sardinian lithic landscape and taskscapes. It has provided much-needed information on procurement and production strategies in Sardinia. Careful examination of the spatial and temporal interplay between source location, obsidian types, primary and secondary chaîne opératoires and aesthetic preferences has demonstrated that lithic practice is an inherently social day-to-day practice. Analysis has revealed a number of long-standing habitus in Sardinian lithic practice; procurement, production and use/discard strategies are not easily tied to specific regions or time periods. At the same time, variations also existed, and local choices are clearly visible. Production and use/discard is organised at a house-hold level and occurs primarily, but not exclusively, at permanent settlements. Part of the dataset has also shown that occasional and different activities occurred elsewhere. Moreover, this study revealed that so-called simple or expedient assemblages, especially single-stage flake, blade and mixed flake/blade reduction and bipolar flake reduction are skilfully knapped.

Despite the evident importance of the nobility a study of its economic and social position in Piedmont has so far never been attempted. All previous studies of any value have been dedicated almost exclusively to the growth of the State. Such attention as has been paid to the aristocracy has consequently been limited to its relations to government policy. The importance of the nobility has always been neglected and perhaps under-estimated. The fundamental works of Einuadi and Prato on the finances and economy of Piedmont in the early 18th century forms clear examples; the nobility is above all discussed for its immunities, and the final conclusion is that these immunities were remarkably limited. Einaudi, examining the 18.03% of ecclesiastical and fuedal exemption in 1700, compares it to other countries: in the Kingdom of Naples in 1740 2/3 of all landed revenues were in the hands of the clergy and nobility, all virtually immune; in the France of 1780 at least half the land was in some way exempt. At the same time, the Piedmontese nobility is judged as a fairly poverty-stricken class.

The last comprehensive biography on Francesco Filelfo was written well over one hundred and fifty years ago. Since then the general state of knowledge about this humanist has been largely conditioned by G. Voigt's hostile assessment and G. Bendaucci's unsystematic and unreliable studies. Monographs on Filelfo's stay at Florence and Siena have been provided by G. Zippel and L. de Feo Corso, but the chief period in Filelfo's life, i.e. Filelfo at the court of Milan, has so far not been studied in adequate depth. E. Garin's recent account of Filelfo at Milan does not open up any new vistas. Yet Milan was the city where Filelfo spent half his life, where he wrote almost all his works and where he left a deep imprint in the development of humanistic culture. This thesis is therefore intended to fill this gap. The recent publication of P.O. Kristeller's 'Iter Italicum' made it possible to base such a reappraisal on an extensive survey of Filelfo manuscripts in Italian libraries. Almost all the existing Filelfo manuscripts at Rome, Florence, Milan, Pisa, Lucca, Bergamo, Venice, Munich, Oxford, Holkham Hall and London have been examined for this thesis. All unpublished material found there had to be copied and editions had to be prepared. Only Vienna, Paris and Wolfenbüttel seem to hold still unknown works. Particularly in the archives of Florence and Milan a large amount of entirely new material has been discovered which is being edited for the first time in the appendix of this thesis. It throws a significant light on Filelfo's social and economic situation. It allows us to penetrate the curtain of rhetorical declamations of Filelfo's letters and to understand the economic and cultural reality that lay behind them. Another purpose of this thesis consisted in the compilation of a bibliography in which all the various publications on Filelfo since about 1870 are listed, for they are scattered in periodicals and sometimes difficult to trace. [Continued in text ...]

This thesis analyses the potential agricultural production of the regions of South Etruria and Sabina, north of Rome in the Middle Tiber Valley, Central Italy. Historical evidence from Roman authors is combined with archaeological evidence from field survey and geographical resource data, and modelled within a Geographical Information System. Farm size and location are investigated in order to determine any correlation with contemporary Roman recommendations. Multi-criteria evaluation is then used to create suitability maps, showing those regions within the study area best suited to different types of crops. A number of different models for agricultural production within the study area are presented. Many variables are utilised, each presenting a range of possibilities for the carrying capacity of the area, complementing previous studies of demography. Research into workload, nutrition and crop yields provides a basis for determining the supported population of the area. Urban provisioning is investigated also, showing how high yielding models could have supported a large urban population within the studied region, as well as its potential contribution to the food supply of Rome. This analysis showed which agricultural systems could adequately supply urban centres, and highlighted those models that would have led either to an urban dependency on larger scale trade networks or to decline.

This dissertation explores the connection between the sculpture of Modena Cathedral, with emphasis on the Porta della Pescheria, the Porta dei Principi, and the West Facade, and the historical and cultural conditions of its conception and creation.

This thesis analyzes the three texts forming the so-called „Fantastic trilogy‟ by Tommaso Landolfi: La pietra lunare (1939), Racconto d’autunno (1947) and Cancroregina (1950), in the light of the cultural and historical environment in which they were produced. I argue that these novellas incorporate and obliquely problematize specific tensions of the period running from Racial Laws (1938) and the Pact of Steel (1939) to post-war reconstruction. Building on recent scholarship on the subversive role of the Fantastic, the study provides a more comprehensive view of Landolfi‟s early production and challenges accepted views on his Fantastic as exclusively ironical, intellectual and free-play. This thesis also investigates the sources through which Landolfi delineates this oblique form of socio-political critique. Whereas scholarship in the past has widely recognized that Landolfi draws inspiration from nineteenth-century French, Russian and German classics in the genre of Gothic and Fantastic fiction, this contribution draws attention to the way Landolfi negotiates this traditional repertoire through input from both Italy‟s „high‟ literary tradition (Dante, Leopardi, Manzoni, D‟Annunzio), Italian folklore and other non-literary sources (i.e. occultism and psychiatry). This thesis considers Landolfi‟s work from fresh angles, applying recent Anglophone theoretical frameworks (including theories on post-humanism, on the subversive role of the Fantastic and political readings of Gothic fiction) to his writing and probing his portrayals of dynamics and tensions that continue to challenge us today. Additionally, it makes use of the anthropological notion of „liminality‟ to underline the intrinsic thematic, textual and narrative ambiguity of the three novellas. I claim that the texts‟ liminality – involving slippery entities, settings, situations and narrative modalities that do not fit any precise category – voices the cultural and political instability of the decade under analysis. The study makes a deeper, and more nuanced, contribution to the literature on Landolfi, reflecting upon the author‟s strategies for problematizing contemporary historical and cultural issues by means of a fiction only apparently detached from reality.

This creative writing thesis consists of a full-length novel, Stay Hungry, Stay Choosy. The premise of the novel is that, by 2050, Italy will be a de jure gerontocracy that cannibalises its young. This thesis contributes to research on moral panics as it brings to the fore the voices of the voiceless and further explores the locus of youth unemployment in the discussion on social deviance. Thus, the thesis explores how Erich Goode and Nachman Ben-Yehuda's (1994) moral panics theory explains the mono-narrative of young people's transition from education to employment in Italy and the United Kingdom. In my academic research, I use a critical paradigm based on the fundamental premise that creative writing should play a key role in the liminal place that bridges social research and social activism. The research is framed by a number of social theories, underpinning the public discourse on youth overeducation, unemployment and underemployment. Subsequently, an in-depth analsyis is carried out, using the lens of Goode and Ben-Yehuda's moral panics framework, in order to show how the pervasive dichotomy of the angry youth and the aboulic youth in public discourse is used to stereotype the young and to maintain the power dynamics between both generations and socio-economic classes. Thirdly, Urbanski's 'rhetorical circle' (1975) is shown to be the explanatory metaphor that allows speculative fiction writers, such as Anthony Burgess and Marco Bosonetto, to draw upon pervasive social fears about the young, creatively elaborate upon them and hold up a mirror to readers by incorporating these fears into storytelling. These theoretical concepts are then explored from the perspective of young people, through ethnographic inquiry. Finally, the research outcomes are filtered through the process of self-reflexivity in order to illustrate the choices I had to make in order to complete the present novel in a way that respects both the conventions of the speculative writing genre and draws upon research findings. This thesis thus contributes to the case that creative writing has a key role to play in linking social science findings to practice by drawing concepts and findings together in a coherent narrative. This thesis turns this literary call to action into a real-life manifesto.

Angelica's Book and the World of Reading in Late Renaissance Italy Dooley, Brendan, London: Bloomsbury Academic Press 216 pp., $91.99, ISBN 978-1-4742-4031-1 Publication Date: October 2016

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