The plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries has inspired interpretations in every genre and medium. This book offers perspectives on the ways in which practitioners have used Renaissance drama to address contemporary concerns and reach new audiences. It provides a resource for those interested in the creative reception of Renaissance drama.

The Renaissance was a time of cultural rebirth. Allow students to learn all about life and education during the Renaissance in this engaging title. Readers will explore how artists created masterpieces and explored subjects like music, architecture, Renaissance religion, and new artistic movements like naturalism. The intriguing facts and beautiful images allow readers to see examples of Renaissance art from great artists like Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci. The easy-to-read text, table of contents, accessible glossary, and helpful index work together to create a captivating reading experience. This book also includes an in-class writing activity to further students' understanding of the trade of painting during the Renaissance.

The fourteen essays presented in this volume contribute substantially to the study of the reinvention of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. They take an historicized approach to constructions of the past, and most address the relatively new field of Medievalism. All of them focus on how and why the present of any period uses the past to promote its own opinions, beliefs, doctrines or views. In particular, the volume demonstrates that reinventions of past eras or figures can be motivated by a nationalistic desire to create cultural 'roots', to discover origins that justify a regime or group's self-identity, to appropriate a cultural icon or neglected author for a particular political agenda, or to reflect on contemporary social issues via a remote time and place. Reworkings or adaptations of earlier culture often tell us more about the age in which they were produced than the one revived or revisited. This volume features five essays that treat medieval subjects; four focus on Tudor and Stuart figures, religion or politics; and five concentrate on nineteenth-century uses of medieval or early modern events, literary conventions, settings and themes.

First published in 1988, Alison Brown's The Renaissance soon established itself as one of the most popular and useful books on this complex topic. For this expanded Second Edition the author has rewritten the text entirely in the light of the wealth of literature published over the past decade. It contains two new chapters, one on the rise of lordships and the impact of the Black Death and one on Renaissance theatre. As ever, the main focus of the book is on the influence of classical ideas on Italy, and although Florence is still central to the book its uniqueness is now viewed more critically.

Fully illustrated throughout, The Renaissance is a highly accessible and colourful journey along the cultural contours of Europe from the Late Middle Ages to the early modern period.

Originally published in 1967, this book discusses some key writers of the Renaissance: Machiavelli, Castiglione, Bacon and Hobbes and compares their work by relating it that of others in England and elsewhere. Chapters on Bacon contain references to Galileo and Descartes; the chapter on Castiglione also touches on Montaigne. The book also contrasts various currents of thought in the Renaissance with their medieval counterparts or forerunners. The volume isolates the great themes, or revolutionary shifts in as they manifest themselves in the work of important writers and thinkers.

Now available as an ebook.