Renaissance Books

If you're going to buy one book on Marlowe, this should be it. Kuriyama does an extraordinary job of sifting through the mystery and garbage to tell the story of Marlowe. Too many writers have sensationalized and distorted the facts, whereas Kuriyama not only provides the evidence but interprets them analytically and beautifully. Also, this is the only book where you'll find all the original source documents in one place. Plus, she knows how to keep you interested, writing in a well-thought out style that doesn't insult your intelligence, but doesn't lose you either. Well worth the read.

...is that we can never really know the complete truth. I once did a paper on Marlowe (1564-1593) during my college days and I have been fascinated with him ever since. Like his exact contemporary Shakespeare, Marlowe has left us only a paper trail to follow. He didn't have the advantage of having a set of his plays published during his lifetime and of course he didn't plan to be stabbed to death when he was 29. Because all we have are a few documents and a possible portrait at Cambridge you have to fill in the blanks with a lot of conjecture which can't be based on solid evidence. Some biographers have followed in the footsteps of writers such as George Garrett (ENTERED FROM THE SUN) and Anthony Burgess (A DEAD MAN IN DEPTFORD) and have created quite a fanciful life for the poet. It makes for good reading but often distorts what little truth there is. Constance Brown Kuriyama in her well documented book is able to show us what is known and then gives us the luxury of making our own observations. Of course she draws her own conclusions but unlike most other Marlowe biographies (and I have read a number of them) she lets the facts speak for themselves without a lot of embellishment. Marlowe emerges as a powerful personality whose ideas as presented in his few plays show him to be one of the most original thinkers and observers of the Elizabethan age. His early and violent death continue to strike a resonant chord to this day as we think on what was lost and on the impact he had on other writers who followed him. If you are interested in Elizabethan drama beyond Shakespeare and the effect of the Renaissance in England then you really need to be acquainted with Christopher Marlowe and this is the ideal place to start. The book is easy to follow without dumbing down the material and almost half of it consists of documents and other details that ground the proceedings in a reality that few others can match. Thank you Constance Brown Kuriyama for a job well done.

As the editors write in their introduction, Wallace Thurman remains unknown to most of the public today, including many scholars of American literature. Without question, Thurman embodied the Harlem Renaissance, in all of its highs and lows, even though he was skeptical of the movement's faddishness and the claims of its champions.

Besides being a capable novelist and playwright--his poetry is less distinguished, Thurman was a perceptive essayist and critic. You will seldom find literary criticism this accessible, refreshing, balanced, witty, and intelligent in any era. Thurman is rarely boring; even when he repeats himself or riffs off of other authors (e.g., George Schuyler or Richard Bruce Nugent), he gives his work a color all its own.

Readers interested in the Harlem Renaissance must buy this book. It's an enormous treasure.

The greatest tragedy of this collection of writings from Wallace Thurman will be it being assigned only to students of American Literature for course work. This is a book that deserves better since it offers a look into one of the best and leading intellectuals to come out of the Harlem Renaissance. Much like GAY REBEL OF THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE: BRUCE NUGENT, the editors Amritjit Singh and Daniel Scott allow Thurman to speak for himself through his own writings that include essays,reviews, poems, short stories, dramatic works for live theater, and excerpts from three novels like INFANTS OF THE SPRING. Before all this, there is a great introduction by the editors that attempt to detail to a successful degree how Thurman's mind worked. Thurman saw the Renaissance taking place around him as a chance for black writers to prove their worth along side the best white writers of the day. He understood that to produce lasting works of accomplishment to live beyond the Harlem Renaissance, black writers had to be maintain their integrity and be allowed artistic freedom to write without the selling out to fads (i.e. the explotative facination of anything "Negro" from larger white audience of his day) and be beyond the propaganda of the black middle class of his day that demanded any work literature from New Negros uphold the nondiscript policy of not being "down low" and too earthy. Thurman's high ideals, accute sense of individuality and artistic temperament as envinced by this book spared no one, especially himself. As a young man he voraciously read most of the old master of literature and believed that any work of literature produce should hold its own with theirs. This line of thinking resulted in his never being completely happy with his own work, especially when he believe himself to have acquiesced to black middle class propaganda.

One of the many facinating things I truely enjoy about this book are the letters included. You have the letter showing him trying to curry favor with W.E.B. Du Bois. Also,there is his correspondence with Alan Locke, Claude Mckay, Harold Jackman, Langston Hughes,and others. In his correspondence, Thurman is funny, serious, and sad revealing his hopes and dreams. The letter to Willam Rapp is interesting because Thurman's mentions his arrest during his first days in New York on an indecency charge (i.e. caught being intimate with another man in a public restroom). Unlike Langston Hughes who was also gay and had a web of protection about him to maintain his high image status in black America, Thurman, like Nugent, did not.

All in all, this is a book worth having for the adverage person interested in a forgotten
hero and leader of the Harlem Renaissance.

I WILL ONLY WRITE, THAT AS A PAINTER, THIS BOOK SERVES TO CREATE NOT ONLY HISTORICAL CONTEXT OF RENAISSANCE PAINTING, BUT ENRICHES THAT HISTORY WITH THOROUGH EVALUATION OF THE CURRENT USE OF SCIENTIFIC/CONSERVATION METHODS TO BETTER UNDERSTAND HOW AN ARTIST'S TECHNIQUE IS INTEGRAL TO UNDERSTANDING THE INTENT OF THE ARTIST AND THE MEANING IN A PIECE OF ARTWORK. IT REPRESENTS AN IMPORTANT BREAKTHROUGH IN MODERN ART HISTORY THROUGH ITS ATTEMPT TO EXPLAIN THE IMPORTANCE OF TECHNIQUE, COLOR THEORY, AND THEIR SERVICE TO CONTENT IN THE RENAISSANCE. DR. HALL'S OTHER BOOK (ALSO OUT OF PRINT, ALAS), WHICH IS A SERIES OF ESSAYS BY PEOPLE IN THE FIELD, SHOULD ALSO BE IN PRINT: "COLOR AND TECHNIQUE IN RENAISSANCE PAINTING: ITALY AND THE NORTH".

A wonderful read, thorough, focused and all about looking. One of only a few books that truly approaches the idea of painting and its history on its own terms. Mrs Hall beautifully discusses ideas of process as being inextricably bound to the idea of particular meaning. Beginning with painting's early interest in the description of likness and the evocation of literal space, she traces a remarkably plausible chronological development wherein all of what are now the standard conventions of painting are discovered. Mrs Hall has written a book that seems custom built for painters; it is wonderful.

The only autobiography ever written by a reigning Pope (r.1458-1464), it is very entertaining and well written. It offers a window on a Renaissance man and his life and world written in his own words. This recent 2003 Harvard University translation is modern and easy to read, with the original Latin text on each facing page (ie. the amount of actual English translation is about 188 pages). It is mostly about current political events of the day (a time of great conflict and strife) and memorable scenes from his life, written with great artistic skill by a master of rhetoric.

Some of the more memorable scenes including his trip to Scotland where he stays the night in a hay-loft with two Scottish women.. the incredible set-piece when he is elected Pope, the drama of which is nothing short of some of the best I've read in a while, his entire life leading up to this scene: "All sat in their seats, pale and silent, thunderstruck, as if in a trance. For some time no one spoke, no one opened his lips, no one moved any part of his body except his eyes, which kept darting about." And the travel from Rome northward to meet with the Holy Roman Emperor to discuss what to do about the Turks and the recent Fall of Constantinople - in particular some of the accounts of lords and the tortures and sexual abuses they committed were really very shocking - a window on the world as it was.

Excerpted from a book review published in "Bryn Mawr Classical Review" (2004.11.08):

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Margaret Meserve, Marcello Simonetta, Pius II: Commentaries (Volume 1). I Tatti Renaissance Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004. ISBN 0-674-01164-3.

Reviewed by Dr. Dustin A. Gish, John Cabot University and The American University of Rome


"These are the labors of the night, for we have borrowed the hours owed to sleep and spent the better part of them on our writing. Another man, it is true, might have used his watch better, but I felt an obligation to my mind, which took such delight in the task."

Thus writes Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini (1405-64; Pope Pius II, r. 1458-64), in 1462, one of the tensest years of his papacy, regarding the completion of his treatise on Asia, part of an ambitious, yet unfinished Cosmographia. These lines serve as a fitting epigram for Aeneas Sylvius [hereafter, AS] and open the Introduction to the first of five projected volumes of Pius II: Commentaries from the I Tatti Renaissance Library, edited and translated by Margaret Meserve and Marcello Simonetta.

In this volume we have the first two books of AS's Commentaries: a monumental work (thirteen books in all) of literature, historiography, and autobiography, authored by one of the most intriguing characters in the humanist movement. It is the only autobiography ever written by a reigning pope, and the fitting culmination and keystone of a Renaissance career which may be called 'typical' only in the sense of being truly exemplary. AS excelled as a humanist scholar and diplomat, and was an accomplished Latin poet (crowned 'Poet Laureate' in 1442: I.11.1); held the post of secretary to two bishops, three cardinals, an anti-pope, and the Holy Roman Emperor (by his own admission, "an extraordinary distinction": I.14.1); served as ambassador and vice-chancellor to the Emperor as well as papal legate and apostolic secretary to two popes; was made bishop of Trieste, and later of his native Siena; finally, in 1456, was created cardinal and -- only two years later -- elected pope.

The present volume reflects AS's education and ascent as poet, orator, secretary, and statesman (I.1-32); the circumstances surrounding his membership in the College of cardinals and elevation as Pius II, following the death of Pope Calixtus III (I.33-37); and events of his papacy leading up to his convocation of the Congress of Mantua in 1459 to meet the gathering threat to Europe posed by the Ottoman Turks, interspersed with AS's orations and observations during his travel from Rome to Mantua (II.1-44).

Overall, in the classically-inspired pages of AS's Commentaries, "composed in elegant humanistic Latin modeled on Caesar and Cicero,"we discover the highly-polished mirror of a Renaissance man amid the splendor and tumult of his times.2 Fittingly, the first two books of AS's Commentaries (and this volume) conclude with his praise of the noble young orator who had addressed the pope on his arrival in Mantua (II.44.1).3 Speaking of the beautiful young lady, only thirteen years of age, who on that occasion composed and delivered an oration in Latin worthy of her illustrious and eloquent host, AS remarked: "her style was so elegant that all who heard her were lost in wonder and admiration." (II.44.4) No small praise from the poet laureate and pope who in his younger days had himself held the courts and potentates of Europe captive with his eloquence.

Many historical re-enactors and scholars have known of this indispensable resource on the web only, longing for the day when we could pen our own notes in the margins while enjoying a G and T on the veranda. At last we have our chance!

This book by Maggie Secara is truly one of the finest introductions to the early modern world you're likely to find. Pithy, charming, and learned, this is a book that is hard to put down. As you might expect, it is filled with all the details of renaissance daily life you're looking for, but the book is so much more than mere lists of things. One feels as though the author is taking you by the hand and giving you her own well-informed and personal tour of the past.

If you are a lover of history, you will revel in its pages. If you are a writer with an interest in early modern Britain, you'll want to keep this book in a holster at your side. If you are someone merely with a love of knowledge for the intricate doings of another age: Welcome home!

Did you know that the first shopping mall was opened in London in 1571? That in 16th century England, gifts were given on New Year's Day but not on Christmas? That beer could be flavored with anything from pepper to lupins? All this and more can be found in this book.

The Compendium website at [...] has long been the go-to website for authors, students, actors, re-enactors, and Elizabethan enthusiasts of all kinds. Now in paperback, anyone can have the Compendium on hand wherever they go!

The Compendium of Common Knowledge is a series of snapshots of daily life in the court and countryside of Shakespeare and Good Queen Bess, written for the everyday reader. Painstakingly researched and illustrated from period sources, each page dishes up details about food, language, games, and gossip, as well as the work, weddings, and beliefs of more than 400 years ago. There's a detailed index to make it especially easy to use, plus notes on the sources so you can find out more. There's even a bonus chapter on persona building that's perfect for guildmasters and authors both.

What can you do with the Compendium in paperback that you can't do online?
- Make notes in the margins
- Read it in bed
- Take it to workshops
- Stash it in the tourney box
- Write a book report
- Give extra copies as gifts
- And best of all--you can use it even when the computer is down!

For several years, Renaissance re-enactors have been using Secara's online version of the "Compendium" to educate themselves about the everyday knowledge of the historical characters they portray. Just as 21st century people know that "text" is a verb and what a "blog" is, so did the people in the English Renaissance know the value of an "angel" and who the "recusants" were. From husbandmen to merchants to the nobility, these are the things all Elizabethans would have known.

What Daniel Pool's "What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew" did for the nineteenth century, Secara's "Compendium" provides for the reader who wants to know more about the world of the English Renaissance. While the information contained within this accessible volume was originally designed for re-enactors, it would also be useful for actors, readers (and authors!) of historical fiction, students of literature (impress your English and History profs!) and armchair historians of every stripe.

A few caveats: the layout of the book is sporadic, reflecting its online origins. On the one hand, it feels less methodical (the devalued coinage of Scotland and Ireland is mentioned in the section on gambling), but on the other hand, the connection of diverse areas leads to some wonderful insights (so don't gamble with Scots unless you account for the difference in the coinage). Furthermore, there are both a topic index and a thorough general index in the back to help locate specific information.

The tone of the book is conversational and light, but the information is sound. While the author is upfront about her lack of footnotes and citations, she also provides notes about primary and secondary source materials for those who want to follow up on a detail or question. In consultation with other researchers in the re-enactment community, Secara is also continuing to update the online site with corrections and sources as they become available. Similarly, Secara doesn't pretend to more thorough examinations of the complex areas of religion, politics and economics than she provides. When she is giving a superficial, generalist description, she says so, and refers the reader to other sources for more complete information.

All in all, this is a very useful book for anyone interested in the everyday, common-man aspects of history. It can be read straight through from cover to cover, dipped into at random, or searched for specific details. Better still, it provides a portable version of an online reference that countless people have come to know and rely upon.

My mentor Lee Slonimsky (of Pythagoras In Love) highly recommended this
author because of the similarity in the tone of our "walking poems".
The prose and poetry by Louise Labe, with excellent translation by Annie Finch, depicts a poignant tale of love and passion that transcends death.
The markings in her tombstone brought me tears, while her sizzling passionate poem (of kisses) mirrors my own romantic expressions in poetry.
Simply loved it! Kudos to Annie Finch for capturing such fine moments of a French lover, in English.

This is an excellent edition of the complete works of Louise Labe, who is one of the most important women writers of the French Renaissance and whose poetry is especially wonderful, providing a much-needed female perspective on the love lyric. One mustn't ignore Labe's prose however, for her "Debate of Folly and Love" is an excellent addition to the literary tradition of the debate and showcases Labe's proto-feminism.


Deborah Lesko Baker provides excellent introductions to Labe's poetry and prose, describing her life and times and her relation to other Renaissance writers (esp. Christine de Pisan). Baker illuminates Labe's role as a distinctively female writer and how her sonnets respond to those of Petrarch. Essentially, then, Baker provides all the background necessary for a full understanding of Labe, and she also supplies copious and helpful footnotes to Labe's works.

In addition, Annie Finch's translations of Labe's poetry are superb, capturing the spirit of the originals (of course, the french is on the facing page). All in all, this is an essential purchase for anyone interested in Labe or French Renaissance literature, being the only complete bilingual edition of Labe's works available and a model for all scholarly editions of its kind.

While clearly not exhaustive, this one-volume encyclopedia is a goldmine of key facts about significant individuals, movements, and styles, as well as such subjects as crime, family, mathematics, mirrors, nature, patronage, population, rhetoric, science, and wars. You will find here a convenient explanation of the term "Renaissance," a French word applied to an Italian movement. If you thought Mannerism was simply a reaction to the High Renaissance style, its entry will enlighten you. However, if you want to know the difference between, say, the High Renaissance style in Rome and in Venice, you will have to read the entries for individual artists and draw your own conclusions -- or go farther afield than this book. It's not quite that comprehensive. The descriptions of particular cities focus on political history rather than artistic history, a puzzling lapse considering that Siena, Florence, Rome, and Venice, to name a few, had such identifiably different styles. Some gaps notwithstanding, this is a very useful book. My calling it "affordable" may be a misnomer if it's unavailable. Keep it on your wish list and hope the publishers reprint it.

I bought my copy of this book some years ago when studying for my Bed degree. It must be on it's upteenth reprint by now, but still remains the most informative, clearly laid out and interesting reference/guide to the Italian Renassance that I have encountered. This book is a constant source of 'factual' information, dates, names, places and people and though my issue runs to three hundred and sixty pages and two hundred and thirty seven illustrations it is still a handy portable size. John Hale has edited a long list of Ren. scholars contributions into an easy, succinct style of writing with each entry in the Encyclopaedia having references to source material and further reading. The only, slight, drawback to this book is that their are no colour pictures - but this probably keeps the price down and that has to be good! I would recommend this excellent introduction to the Italian Renaissance to anyone interested in the subject, particularly those studying a course.

Where's the great editorals from some leading authors and experts in the field ? Just started to re-read. Great stuff for those spearheading a re-engineering project. Still awaiting your next text/book from the trio of Kelvin, Rich and John.

The book is crisply written, and gives some remarkably clear insights and advice on reengineering. It also provides some useful, applicable tools (process maps, LP diagrams) to make an effort more effective. Advice includes service quality design, organizing a reengineering effort, and implementation. All is invaluable.

I stongly recommend this book.

From a review by Anthony Grafton in The New York Review of Books, March 4, 1999 (Vol. XLVI, No. 4), pp. 34-38. "Like Burckhardt, Ingrid Rowland sees the Renaissance as the birth of a new culture and society. Like Burckhardt, too, she brings this lost world back to three-dimensional life and vivid color, for, like him, she too is a splendid writer whose words evoke unforgettable images of Renaissance society. Rowland deftly describes the young artists and warriors we know from Benvenuto Cellini's autobiography, every ready to fight or fornicate. . . . More remarkably, Rowland does as much for the city's old scholars." "Though Rowland peoples her story with memorable characters, she also re-creates the institutions in which they had to make their way." "Especially effective-and particularly fascinating-are Rowland's recreations of particular Roman circles and their ways of making scholarship into art." "Rowland's remarkable enterprise in cultural history synthesizes earlier scholarship of many kinds: that of urban historian like David Coffin, Christopher Frömmel, and Charles Burroughs; of intellectual historians like John D'Amico and Charles Stinger; of historians of the classical revival in art and architecture like Otto Kurz, Elisabeth MacDougall, and Phyllis Pray Bober; of passionate delvers into Vatican manuscripts like Vittorio Fanelli and Massimo Miglio. But this book really rests more on primary than on secondary sources. . . . Her view of Roman intellectual life, her sense of personal interactions and intellectual collisions, derive directly form the cornucopia of documents she has discovered, evaluated, and edited." "Painters and writers, life as art, style as mediations, banquet years: Ingrid Rowland, like a contemporary Burckhardt, brings a lost world to life. She has given us a genuinely metropolitan High Renaissance, not only passionate and learned, but also sexy, urbane, and fascinating."

It is nearly impossible to overpraise Ingrid Rowland's book. Strikingly original, _The Culture of the High Renaissance_ is a dazzling display of scholarship and one of the finest examples of historical writing in recent memory. There is exceptional erudition here--her work is a feast of information, rare insight, and compelling interpretation--and it is presented by Rowland from beginning to end with enthusiasm and considerable grace. Refreshingly, she always gives the sense of inviting the reader along to share in the discovery of a world she knows so well, and so clearly loves. The writing itself is something extraordinary. Here the fascinating world of sixteenth century Rome is presented with passion, affection, and humor--a more than welcome antidote to the bloodless prose of much current academic writing. This should come as no surprise to readers familiar with Rowland's pieces in _The New York Review of Books_ (her current article, "Titian: The Sacred and Profane" is characteristically dazzling and not to be missed). It is easy to see why Rowland was recently recognized for her outstanding teaching at the University of Chicago. Lucky students...lucky readers. Prof. George Lechner, Italian Renaissance (Honors), University of Hartford

This is a great place to start for anybody interested in the influence of alchemical symbolism on english literature. The alchemists (and especially those who produced alchemical texts) did all kinds of strange, obscure, difficult, puzzling, and therefore fascinating things with language. This fact was not lost on the many important literary figures who never got their hands dirty but found alchemy useful as a theme or symbol in their work, and as this book demonstrates they had many good reasons to take an interest. So will you. Alchemy has been too long neglected as a key element in the religious life of the renaissance and after, and the texts of literary authors dealing with alchemy are an important source for our understanding of this--which still has yet to be fully researched and explained. This book is an important first step, and hopefully will inspire many future studies.

Occultists and spiritual alchemists with an interest in literature and the history of alchemy will find much of value here, although it does not speak to the post-19th century occultist reading of alchemy as much as the renaissance and medieval tradition.

Linden is probably one of the few serious scholars to have taken into consideration the importance of the use of alchemical registers in various central works of late medieval and early modern English literature. Together with an impressive knowledge of the fundamental and less known works of sixteenth century English alchemy, Linden provides his readers with a fisheye view on the idiosyncratic uses authors like Chaucer, Donne, Herbert and others, have made of basic alchemic concepts. The text is important for those scholars and amateurs of the field who still think that alchemy occupies a central position in the "languages", in Pocock's words, spoken in Early Modern England. A work of admirable seriousness and impressive documentation.