A Cultural History of Democracy in the Renaissance

by Virginia Cox (Editor), Joanne Paul (Editor), Eugenio Biagini (Editor)

Overview

This volume offers a broad exploration of the cultural history of democracy in the Renaissance. The Renaissance has rarely been considered an important moment in the history of democracy. Nonetheless, as this volume shows, this period may be seen as a “democratic laboratory” in many, often unexpected, ways. The classicizing cultural movement known as humanism, which spread throughout Europe and beyond in this period, had the effect of vastly enhancing knowledge of the classical democratic and republican traditions. Greek history and philosophy, including the story of Athenian democracy, became fully known in the West for the first time in the postclassical world. Partly as a result of this, the period from 1400 to 1650 witnessed rich and historically important debates on some of the enduring political issues at the heart of democratic culture: issues of sovereignty, of liberty, of citizenship, of the common good, of the place of religion in government.

At the same time, the introduction of printing, and the emergence of a flourishing, proto-journalistic news culture, laid the basis for something that recognizably anticipates the modern “public sphere.” The expansion of transnational and transcontinental exchange, in what has been called the “age of encounters,” gave a new urgency to discussions of religious and ethnic diversity. Gender, too, was a matter of intense debate in this period, as was, specifically, the question of women's relation to political agency and power.

This volume explores these developments in ten chapters devoted to the notions of sovereignty, liberty, and the “common good”; the relation of state and household; religion and political obligation; gender and citizenship; ethnicity, diversity, and nationalism; democratic crises and civil resistance; international relations; and the development of news culture. It makes a pressing case for a fresh understanding of modern democracy's deep roots.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781350273283
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date:	12/15/2022
Series:	The Cultural Histories Series
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	288
File size:	12 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Virginia Cox is Professor of Italian Studies at New York University, USA.

Joanne Paul is Senior Lecturer in Early Modern History at the University of Sussex, UK.
Virginia Cox is Honorary Professor of Early Modern Italian Literature and Culture and Senior Research Fellow at Trinity College, University of Cambridge, UK. She is the author of The Prodigious Muse: Women's Writing in Counter-Reformation Italy (2011), Women's Writing in Italy, 1400-1650 (2008) and The Renaissance Dialogue: Literary Dialogue in its Social and Political Contexts, Castiglione to Galileo (2008).
Joanne Paul is Honorary Senior Lecturer in Intellectual History at the University of Sussex, UK. Her research focuses on the history of political thought of the Renaissance and early modern periods. Her publications include Thomas More (2016) and Queenship and counsel in the Early Modern world (2017, edited with Helen Matheson-Pollock).
Eugenio Biagini is Professor of History at Sidney Sussex College, University of Cambridge, UK. A historian of liberalism and democracy, he has written on British, Irish and Italian history since 1789. His publications include British Democracy and Irish nationalism 1876-1906 (2007), The Shaping of Modern Ireland (2016, edited with Daniel Mulhall), Currents of Radicalism. Popular Radicalism, Organized Labour and Party Politics in Britain, 1850-1914, (1991, edited with A. J. Reid), and Citizenship and Community. Liberals, Radicals and Collective Identities in the British Isles 1865-1931, (1996).

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Notes on Contributors
Series Preface

Introduction
Virginia Cox (New York University, USA) and Joanne Paul (University of Sussex, UK)

1. Sovereignty
Dan Lee (University of California, Berkeley, USA)

2. Liberty and the Rule of Law
Peter Stacey (University of California, LA, USA)

3. The “Common Good”
Simone Maghenzani (Girton College, University of Cambridge, UK)

4. Economic and Social Democracy
Anna K. Becker (Aarhus University, Denmark)

5. Religion and the Principles of Political Obligation
Ethan H. Shagan (University of California, Berkeley, USA)

6. Citizenship and Gender
Virginia Cox (New York University, USA)

7. Ethnicity, Race and Nationalism
Peter Stamatov (Yale University, USA)

8. Democratic Crises, Revolutions and Civil Resistance
David Ragazzoni (Columbia University, USA)

9. International Relations
Kurosh Meshkat (BL-Qatar Foundation Project)

10. Beyond the Polis, Transforming Sovereignty
Kirsty Rolfe (Leiden University, Netherlands)

Notes
Bibliography
Index