Hailed as "King of Poets" by Johann Reuchlin in 1514, Eobanus Hessus (1488-1540) was eager to build on his fame with a stream of new works: "Easter Hymn," "On True Nobility," "On the Avoidance of Drunkenness," "Response from His Majesty Maximilian" (answering Hutten's "Letter from Italia"), and the short epic "Christ's Victory over the Underworld," as well as a hitherto unknown "Inaugural Lecture" on Cicero and Plautus. In 1515 he anonymously published a mock-quodlibetical speech that applies the scholastic method of argumentation to "The Species of Drunkards." Eobanus' first bestseller, this...

A panoramic, state-of-the-art handbook destined to chart a course for future work in the field of early modern Hispanic theater studies. It begins in the closet with an essay on Celestina as closet drama and moves out into the court to explore intersections with courtly love. An essay on the comedia and the classics demonstrates this genre's firm grounding in the classical tradition, despite Lope de Vega's famous protestations to the contrary. Distinct but related genres such as the autos sacramentales and the entremeses also make an appearance. The traditional...

Phineas Fletcher’s epic allegorical poem The Purple Island (1633) combines anatomical and devotional perspectives on the self as the poet explores the relationship between body and soul. The titular island is figured as both body and as England, thus merging religious, corporeal, devotional, and geo-national narratives. The present critical edition offers the first fresh editorial approach to the poem in over a century and situates the poem in its historical and critical contexts. Although the poem has often been regarded as a bizarre and fragmented curiosity, Johnathan H. Pope compellingly...

By way of essays and a selection of primary sources in parallel text, Biography, Historiography, and Modes of Philosophizing provides an introduction to a vast, significant, but neglected corpus of early modern literature: collective biography. It focuses especially on the various related strands of political, philosophical, and intellectual and cultural biography as well as on the intersection between biography, historiography, and philosophy. Individual texts from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century are presented as examples of how the ancient collective biographical tradition – as...

In A Companion to Celestina, Enrique Fernandez brings together twenty-three hitherto unpublished contributions on the Tragicomedia de Calisto y Melibea, popularly known as Celestina (c.1499) written by leading experts who summarize, evaluate and expand on previous studies. The resulting chapters offer the non-specialist an overview of Celestina studies. Those who already know the field will find state of the art studies filled with new insights that elaborate on or depart from the well-established currents of criticism. Celestinas creation and sources, the parody of...

This is the first work by Giovanni Caroli (1428–1503) to appear in print. Caroli was one of the leading theologians in Florence during the last decades of the fifteenth century, a man who lived between the two great traditions of his time: the scholastic and the humanist. The volume contains a critical edition of the Latin text, entitled The Book of My Days in Lucca, an English translation, commentary notes and an introduction. Caroli presents us with his powerful personal reaction to the institutional crisis regarding the required reform in the Dominican Order, yet even here we already...

A Companion to the Spanish Renaissance makes a renewed case for the inclusion of Spain within broader European Renaissance movements. Its introduction, “A Renaissance for the ‘Spanish Renaissance’?” will be sure to incite polemic across a broad spectrum of academic fields. This interdisciplinary volume combines micro- with macro-history to offer a snapshot of the best new work being done in this area. With essays on politics and government, family and daily life, religion, nobles and court culture, birth and death, intellectual currents, ethnic groups, the plastic arts,...

This volume presents, for the first time, a critical edition of the works of the early modern English physician John Cotta. No mere country doctor, Cotta spoke out eloquently and courageously against what he saw as abuses in medicine and injustices in the prosecution of witchcraft. Read by important thinkers such as Robert Burton in England, and by colonial administrators in New England, Cotta helped shape two of the most important debates of his time. Included are the full texts of Cotta’s Short Discovery and The Trial of Witchcraft, both books painstakingly edited and annotated. Also...

Uberto Decembrio’s Four Books on the Commonwealth (De re publica libri IV, ca. 1420), edited and translated by Paolo Ponzù Donato, is one of the earliest examples of the reception of Plato’s Republic in the fifteenth century. The humanistic dialogue provides an illuminating insight into such themes as justice, the best government, the morals of the prince and citizen, education, and religion. Decembrio’s dialogue is dedicated to Filippo Maria Visconti, duke of Milan, the ‘worst enemy’ of Florence. Making use of literary and documentary sources, Ponzù Donato convincingly proves...

In Giovanni Aurelio Augurello (1441–1524) and Renaissance Alchemy, Matteo Soranzo offers the first in-depth study of the life and works of Augurello, Italian alchemist, poet and art connoisseur from the time of Giorgione. Analysed, annotated and translated into English for the first time, Augurello’s poetry reveals a unique blend of late medieval alchemical doctrines, Northern Italian antiquarianism and Marsilio Ficino’s Platonism, enriching conventional narratives of Renaissance humanism.