While historians typically describe the state as emerging through a wide variety of processes and structures such as armies, bureaucracies, and administrative organizations, this book demonstrates that a crucial but unrecognized component of statebuilding in Renaissance Venice was the management of public speech: controlling foul language. Ideas about language were deeply embedded in Venetian political culture. Instead of studying the history of language through literary, printed texts, Horodowich examines the speech of everyday people on the streets of Renaissance Venice by looking at their...

This volume considers Italy's history and examines how Italians became fascinated with the New World in the early modern period.

Demonstrates how Venetian newsmongers played a crucial yet heretofore unrecognized role in the invention of America.