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For many generations, the importance of the Italian Renaissance lay in its marking the beginning of modern times by means of a self-conscious break with the middle ages. This book seeks above all to convey the variety of cultural activity in Italy in the period between the fourteenth-century and the seventeenth: at different times within those three centuries, in different places in Italy, in association with different political ideologies. While this involves a measure of deconstruction, it also demands a synthesis that aims to communicate the richness of historical experience in the regions of Italy and the significance of that experience in the history of Europe as a whole.
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This text treats Rome and the arts and religious culture in Italy, in the century or so after the Council of Trent. Clerical bureaucrats may have sought to impose control and uniformity, but the nine essays in this volume demonstrate the continuing vitality of a wide range of creative artistic production. The book is illustrated with more than 50 reproductions. Parts I and II explore themes of Italian artists as saints and sinners, and arts of sanctity, suffering and sensuality in Italy. Part III, "Italy and Beyond: Rome and Global Catholic Culture", acknowledges world-wide dimensions of early modern Catholicism. The work seeks to elucidate the rich and multifaceted character of Catholicism in Italy between 1550 and 1650. Papal Rome spoke, but even as Italian Catholics listened, they themselves also spoke, and wrote, sang, acted and painted. ... Read more

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This book covers one of the most controversial subjects in Italian historiography, namely the success or failure of the Church's policy during the counter-Reformation to exert rigorous control not only over theology but over all branches of knowledge. By drawing extensively upon newly-opened sources in the archive of the former Congregation of the Holy Office, generally known as the "Inquisition", it affords a more articulated and objective assessment of the effects of ecclesiastical censorship on religion and culture in early modern Italy. ... Read more

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"Guercino's Paintings and His Patrons' Politics in Early Modern Italy" examines how the seventeenth-century Italian painter Giovanni Francesco Barbieri (better known as II Guercino) instilled the political ideas of his patrons into his paintings. As it focuses on eight works showing religious scenes and scenes taken from Roman history, this volume bridges the gap between social and cultural history and the history of art, untangling the threads of art, politics, and religion during the time of the Thirty Years' War. A prolific painter, Guercino enjoyed the patronage of such luminaries as Pope Gregory XV; Cardinals Serra, Ludovisi, Spada, and Magalotti; and the French secretary of state La Vrilliere. While scholarly research has been devoted to Guercino's oeuvre, this book is the first to place his works squarely in the context of the political and social circumstances of seventeenth-century Italy, stressing the points of view and agendas of his powerful patrons. What were once meanings only apparent to the educated elite-or those familiar with the political affairs of the time-are now scrutinized and clarified for an audience far from the struggles of early modern Europe. ... Read more

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Italy: The Enduring Culture offers an insightful and fascinating look at the history, culture and society of this betwitching country. Jonathan White charts the formation of modern Italy, from the rapid rise of powerful merchant cities in Dante's time to millenial change in the present technological age, exploring how modern culture and society in Italy have emerged from earlier configurations.

White looks specifically at how Italy has incorporated and continually represents its past. He reveals the ambivalence of the city of Venice as a living myth, its water-bound houses functioning alternately in the collective mind as figures of decadance and death and as signs of life, fulfilment and the birth of the future. The book explores the age-old culture of death in Sicily in the light of Mafia killings of public figures and aspects of Italian society and culture that include class, economics, politics, opera and literature. It also considers, in the context of Italian emigration, what qualities of Italianness survive in the espresso bars, luxury goods and musical culture of these far-flung Italian communities.

Affordable, fascinating and fully-illustrated throughout, this is the ideal book for anyone interested in Italian history, society and culture. ... Read more

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Since the demise of the First Republic, Italy's social and political developments have appeared both intriguing and contradictory to the outside world, resulting in controversial interpretations of the current changes. Based on a study of two northern areas characterized until recently by a proletarian/communist subculture and an interclassist/Catholic one, this book offers important perspectives as a result of new research. Political change has often been spectacular. However, the author argues, it has been accompanied by a high degree of continuity in the sphere of kinship and social networks, thus remaining embedded in unchanging social structures. She arrived at her findings by going beyond traditional methods of analyzing political change and addressing the more fundamental question of the underlying behavior and attitudes in family and social relations, moral and religious beliefs and values, and forms of political socialization and identity.By examining the concepts such as "social capital" and "civicness," recently popularized and applied to Italy by Robert Putnam, and the role of subculture, she comes to the conclusion that Italian "civicness" is inextricably bound up with cultural and political localism and that the linear development from collective, socially-embedded political behaviour towards pluralism and individuals, as envisaged by many political commentators, does not hold in the light of thorough research; the relationship between pluralistic and collectivist behaviour is much more complex than has been generally believed so far. ... Read more

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Discusses the geography, history, economy, culture, and people of Italy. ... Read more

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From its early beginnings at SLAC in the 1970s, the study of nucleon spin structure using polarized lepton beams and polarized nucleon targets has become increasingly important in nuclear and particle physics, with current experiments at several of the world's high energy and nuclear physics laboratories (CERN, DESY, SLAC and Jefferson Lab) and with enormous related theoretical studies. The understanding of the fascinating but complicated problem of nucleon spin structure has progressed substantially, but fundamental questions remain and it can be confidently predicted that future activity will be high. The Erice Course on the Spin Structure of the Nucleon covered both the experimental and theoretical aspects of the subject, and this volume includes the lectures given at the School. In many cases the lecture material has been extended and updated by the authors. In addition, several recent publications on experimental work have been added in an appendix. ... Read more

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In her examination of the culture of Italian fascism, Mabel Berezin focuses on how Mussolini's regime consciously constructed a nonliberal public sphere to support its political aims. Fascism stresses form over content, she believes, and the regime tried to build its political support through the careful construction and manipulation of public spectacles or rituals such as parades, commemoration ceremonies, and holiday festivities. The fascists believed they could rely on the motivating power of spectacle, and experiential symbols.In contrast with the liberal democratic notion of separable public and private selves, Italian fascism attempted to merge the public and private selves in political spectacles, creating communities of feeling in public piazzas. Such communities were only temporary, Berezin explains, and fascist identity was only formed to the extent that it could be articulated in a language of pre-existing cultural identities. In the Italian case, those identities meant the popular culture of Roman Catholicism and the cult of motherhood. Berezin hypothesizes that at particular historical moments certain social groups which perceive the division of public and private self as untenable on cultural grounds will gain political ascendance. Her hypothesis opens a new perspective on how fascism works. ... Read more

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Good Read, if interested in 1922-1943 Italy
Berezin is an engaging writer. This summer I did a directed reading which covered 12 books on Italy/ Italian topics 1919-1945. This was by far the best. It is highly engaging book on Fascist spectical which argues for a more complex look on how Italians responded to Fascism. It has good primary sources and is very professionally done, but it is also so smoothly written and engaging I think even non specialist would enjoy this book. ... Read more

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"Cultural Intermediaries is highly original, featuring contributions from the leading internationally renowned scholars in the field. It raises the discourse on the intellectual history of Jews in Italy during the sixteenth century to a new and higher level. A cutting-edge analysis."--Benjamin Ravid, Brandeis UniversityFocusing on an epoch of spectacular demographic, political, economic, and cultural changes for European Jewry, Cultural Intermediaries chronicles the lives and thinking of ten Jewish intellectuals of the Renaissance, nine of them from Italy and one a Portuguese exile who settled in the Ottoman empire after a long sojourn in Italy. David B. Ruderman, Giuseppe Veltri, and the other contributors to this volume detail how, in the relative openness of cultural exchange encountered in such intellectual centers as Florence, Mantua, Pisa, Naples, Ferrara, and Salonika, these Jewish savants sought to enlarge their cultural horizons, to correlate the teachings of their own tradition with those outside it, and to rethink the meaning of their religious and ethnic identities within the intellectual and religious categories common to European civilization as a whole.The engaging intellectual profiles created especially for this volume by scholars from Israel, North America, and Europe represent an important rereading and reinterpretation of early modern Jewish culture and society and its broader European intellectual contexts. ... Read more

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History and Culture in Italy is a scholarly, introductory survey of the history and culture of Italy, focusing on art and architecture, literature and philosophy, politics and historical events, and observations of daily life in modern Italy. ... Read more

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Italian history and culture affecting modern societies
The author does a good job keeping the reader very interested with his wide-ranging stories about Italian architecture and his own personal stories while he lived in Rome for many years as a Cornell overseas graduate student.

He stated many times that he loved best living in Rome; but he also kept reminding his readers that good jobs are hard to find in Italy for any outsider. So he knew his good life would end someday and his sadness came through his many stories that followed as he traveled throughout Italy and many other parts of Europe.(Note, I found out the same phenomenon of that only a few good jobs available to outsiders while I visited my family in Italy in 2001.So I too know firsthand that the author is telling the big, but often unspoken truth, on difficulty in finding good jobs in Italy and perhaps in other parts of Europe, as well.)

Overall, I think, if the author had added some travel maps and some sketches of his art and architecture that he visited andoften described, it would've been a bit more memorable for the average reader to relate to in this arcane subject of Italian Renaissance Art and Architecture.

The author initial prefatory big claim is that "exploration of history and culture in Italy is an exploration of modern identity, in terms of language, institutions, self-consciousness, and self-expression."I think the author is on to something here with his claim.

Finally, the author consciously chooses in presenting the information by subject rather than by other ways, such as chronologically, may be called into some question, because at times, it's hard to follow where the author is going next in his fast-paced travel schedule.This guy covers a lot of territory and without a decent map in the text it is almost impossible to really know where the heck he is going to next.

Thus a little more thought should be given to how best to present all the data and information he had gathered for so many years while living and traveling in Italy, Poland, Greece and beyond.

Gerard J. Sagliocca, P.E.

gerard_sagliocca@yahoo.com
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This book covers one of the most controversial subjects in Italian historiography, namely the success or failure of the Church's policy during the counter-Reformation to exert rigorous control not only over theology but over all branches of knowledge. By drawing extensively upon newly-opened sources in the archive of the former Congregation of the Holy Office, generally known as the "Inquisition", it affords a more articulated and objective assessment of the effects of ecclesiastical censorship on religion and culture in early modern Italy. ... Read more

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The position of women in Italian society and their portrayal in literature and political propaganda from the Middle Ages to the present are examined in this series of essays, written by specialists in various fields of Italian studies. ... Read more

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Based on the proceedings of the 33rd Workshop of t the INFN ELOISATRON Project, held at the Ettore Majorana Foundation and Centre for Scientific Culture (EMFCSC), Erice, Sicily on October 19-25 1996. ... Read more