This thesis is on the theory and practice of comic sexual euphemism in Renaissance France and England. The term ‘comic sexual euphemism’ means the use of non-literal descriptions for sexual topics for the purposes of comedy, similar to an innuendo or double-entendre. Crucially, instances are often more explicit than straightforward literal statement, so fail to be euphemistic. I use ancient, early modern, and modern theory, as well as my own theoretical insights, and apply this to three types of Renaissance text: texts associated with the court from England and France, medical texts from France and their English translation, and theatre from England and France. Primary authors include Baldesar Castiglione, Pierre de Brantôme, Sir John Harington (who translated Ludovico Ariosto into English – Ariosto is also translated into French by Jean Martin), Laurent Joubert, Jacques Ferrand (translated into English by Edmund Chilmead), Thomas Middleton, Ben Jonson, Edward Sharpham, John Marston, and Pierre de Troterel. At the court of both countries a dangerous line was walked between protecting women and gossiping about them, between proving yourself witty regarding sexual material and going too far. In the world of French medicine, where you might expect professional and clinical language, there is instead a trend towards outrageous sexual humour. As at court, if deemed to have exceeded social norms, this could get writers into trouble. The stage was in some ways a safer environment in which to use comic sexual euphemism, as it was expected more in comic drama. This does not, however, lessen how vibrant and multi-faceted such language could be in early modern drama. Interestingly, similar imagery is found across texts and genres. In this period overall there was a tension between the rhetorical rules which forbid the discussion of the sexually obscene and the clear delight writers took in breaking these.

This dissertation focuses on the artistic and architectural patronage of the Pucci family, Medici stalwarts whose carefully constructed political and cultural alignment with the ruling family of Florence was the impetus for their rising fortunes over the course of the 15th and 16th centuries. Their homes, chapels, and palaces in Tuscany and Rome were designed and furnished with paintings, sculpture, and intarsiated woodwork attributable to Michelozzo; the Pollaiuolo brothers; Botticelli; Giuliano da Sangallo and the heirs to his workshop: Francesco da Sangallo and Antonio da Sangallo the Younger; Baccio d'Agnolo; Pontormo; Bronzino; Baccio and Raffaello da Montelupo; Pietro and Domenico Rosselli; Michelangelo; Bartolommeo Ammannati; Giovanni Battista Naldini; Alessandro Allori; and Giovanni Battista Caccini.

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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

Book Summary: Florence in the Early Modern World offers new perspectives on this important city by exploring the broader global context of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, within which the experience of Florence remains unique. By exploring the city's relationship to its close and distant neighbours, the interdisciplinary chapters reveal the transnational history of Florence. The chapters orient the lenses of the most recent historiographical turns perfected in studies on Venice, Rome, Bologna, Naples, and elsewhere towards Florence. New techniques, such as digital mapping, alongside new comparisons of Architectural Theory and merchants in Eurasia, provide the latest perspectives about Florence’s cultural and political importance before, during and after the Renaissance. From Florentine merchants in Egypt and India, through actual and idealised military ambitions in the sixteenth-century Mediterranean, to Tuscan humanists in late medieval England, the contributors to this interdisciplinary volume reveal the connections Florence held to early modern cities across the globe. Steering away from the historical narrative of an insular Renaissance Europe and instead identifying the significance of other global influences, this volume is essential reading for students and scholars of early modern cities and the Renaissance.

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Review of Everyday Renaissances: The Quest for Cultural Legitimacy in Venice by Sarah Gwyneth Ross

Within painting, there are numerous possibilities for the ways in which a narrative can be compositionally presented in order to communicate a particular emotion or story. Traditional devices including gesture, facial expression, interaction of figures and symbolism establish foundations within the composition to facilitate a narrative response and formulate questions as to the how, what and why. This formal language may also be considered in addition to other concepts surrounding the term narrative itself. The notion of narrative as something which is fluid also encompasses issues of time, movement, and continuity; idea??s which seemingly contradict the static temperament of painting. How painters have been able to successfully construct elements of narrative in their work, while also capturing a sense of movement or a passage of time is the starting point at which the following research takes shape. When embarking on this project, I realised that there was no definitive text on this subject which specifically analysed the form and composition of pictorial narratives as sole entities. Theoretical discussions surrounding a painting??s formal arrangement have mostly been produced in relation to how they either illustrated or have been adapted from a written source. This paper is intended to examine the structure of narrative paintings from a stand alone visual perspective, and not how they are comparative to a literary source. Over the course of this investigation, I subsequently found that the methodologies of continuous narrative paintings from the Renaissance echoed certain theoretical concerns within contemporary cinematic narratives. While painting and film maintain a relationship to some degree because they are both visual media, (in reference to colour, tone and symbolism), the most interesting parallel is the depiction of time. This correlation between painting and film, where elements of the narrative are compositionally presented in a non-linear way, has had the most important influence over the production of my work for the exhibition, ??Hidden Fractures; A Narrative in Time??. Certain structures within film, such as event ??order?? and sequencing resonate correspondingly to the stylistic approach sustained within recent work. This ??jig-saw?? method, presents individual paintings (or canvases) akin to pieces of a story which have been sliced up, and placed back together out of their ??chronological?? order. These chosen snippets may represent a scene or emotion, and uphold their own position or viewpoint in relation to another image or painting. These unmatched sequences of images, similar to the unmatched sequences in film, can disrupt the perception and flow of space, and sense of narrative order. When sequences are viewed out of order, the perception of events within the narrative change. The viewer strives to construct the meaning of the work dependent upon each image??s relationship to another, in turn forming the underlying narrative. Through such ??story comprehension??, the viewer endeavours to create ??logical connections among data in order to match general categories of schema??. (Brangian 15)

This dissertation focuses on the particular ways in which early modern English playwrights connect geographical territory depicted in charts, travel, and colonial literature to the female body. By examining the rhetorical methods that both male and female writers employ, I demonstrate how the emerging imperial discourse relies upon the idea that through marriage, women represent and convey territory for their male relatives. But as physical embodiments of family wealth and property that serve as crucial links between males, these women can subvert this use of their bodies in order to formulate a site of resistance to masculine modes of mapping that penetrate, explore, and chart both territory and bodies. Beginning with depictions of Queen Elizabeth and English geography, I investigate plays from the 1570s to the 1670s that reflect and reshape Elizabeth's cartography of her virgin body. In my consideration of Christopher Marlowe's Tragedie of Dido, Queene of Carthage, and Tamburlaine, I argue that although Dido and Zenocrate serve to represent their homelands and legitimize its conquest by their men, the two queens upset this rhetoric when they delineate their own geographic re-imaginings. Elizabeth Cary's The Tragedie of Mariam and The History of the Life, Reign, and Death of Edward II reveal how both Mariam and Isabel are inscribed by the same colonial rhetoric that imagines the women to be fertile land that can only be properly civilized by men. The next chapter reveals how Thomas Heywood's works reflect and legitimize the growing importance of trade rather than outright conquest in English overseas expansion. In If You Know Not Me, You Know No Bodie and The Fair Maid of the West, Heywood's Queen Elizabeth and her counterpart Bess Bridges demonstrate how any woman's virginity becomes a commodity to be used and traded as a representation of English virtue. The final chapter examines how Margaret Cavendish in Loves Adventures and Bell in Campo reclaims the body as a site of potential resistance by redeploying the rhetoric of virginity and cartography. The coda calls for continued investigation into the uses of geographic rhetoric through the example of Queen Anne.

This dissertation is a fully-annotated scholarly edition of John Fletcher's 1624 play <i>Rule a Wife and Have a Wife</i>. Fletcher's comedy of intrigue about two couples who wed under false pretenses was his final non-collaborative play and represents the culmination of his achievements as a comic dramatist. It has received surprisingly little attention for a play that remained a staple of English and American theatres into the 1860s. The introduction to this edition is the most comprehensive study of the play to date. The critical examination of the domestic politics and structural patterning of the play argues that <i>Rule a Wife and Have a Wife</i> presents marriages that become protective spheres to shield spouses from the twin depredations of economic necessity and tyrannical power once the spouses have given up the urge to dominate each other. A section on Fletcher's language and style explores what Dryden praised as its imitation of the "conversation of gentlemen." The study of Fletcher's source material considers not only the two Spanish narratives he adapted, but also the resources of the King's Men and their theatres which influenced the play's composition. The introduction then contextualizes the play in its initial historical moment and the ways it reacts to England's preparations for war and the marriage negotiations for Prince Charles. The final two sections of the introduction examine the play's circulation in print and on stage. The stage history is supplemented by two appendices: a calendar of nearly 800 known performances and a collation of changes made in acting editions of the play. A recognition of the style and ubiquity of <i>Rule a Wife and Have a Wife</i> will aid scholars in understanding continuities of taste and repertoire in English drama.