Contact us on (02) 8445 2300
For all customer service and order enquiries

Woodslane Online Catalogues

9780801853098 Academic Inspection Copy

Women in the Streets

Essays on Sex and Power in Renaissance Italy
  • ISBN-13: 9780801853098
  • Publisher: JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY PRESS
    Imprint: JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY PRESS
  • By Samuel K. Cohn Jr.
  • Price: AUD $62.99
  • Stock: 0 in stock
  • Availability: This book is temporarily out of stock, order will be despatched as soon as fresh stock is received.
  • Local release date: 13/02/1997
  • Format: Paperback 264 pages Weight: 0g
  • Categories: European history [HBJD]
Description
Reviews
Google
Preview
''These seven essays on women, sex, violence, and piety in Renaissance Italy,'' writes historian Samuel Cohn Jr., ''bespeak the darker side of the Renaissance and, in particular, the decline in Italian women's status from the late fourteenth century until the Counter Reformation visitations of the 1570s. In this sense, these essays run directly counter to Jacob Burckhardt's claim for Renaissance Italy, 'that women stood on a footing of perfect equality with men.'' Challenging conventional views of the history of women in the Italian Renaissance, Cohn examines the lives primarily of non-elite women and looks at their experiences in various city-states and regions, thus offering a different perspective from the history of aristocratic and well-to-do women in the large city-states. Drawing on a wide range of archival documentation, Cohn also relies on large sets of quantitative material to reveal a multifaceted view of women's social worlds not seen from the letters of patrician ladies or the prescriptive judgments of Renaissance moralists. Within the larger historical contexts of the Black Death, the growth of territorial states, and the Counter Reformation, Women in the Streets charts changes in law, the structure and accessibility of the criminal courts, and the customs and mentalities that shaped women's lot, from infanticide to the control of sexual mores. Ultimately, Cohn argues, women are the protagonists of this book, whether the issue is their support of other women or the resolution of conflict in the streets of Florence, the control of their own dowries or the salvation of their own souls.

""Together these essays from this distinguished Renaissance historian will challenge and inform students and scholars. They represent social history at its finest, posing proper questions and marshaling substantial evidence to support all conclusions.""

Google Preview content