Renaissance Psychologies

A thorough and scholarly study of Spenser and Shakespeare and their contrary artistry, covering themes of theology, psychology, the depictions of passion and intellect, moral counsel, family hierarchy, self-love, temptation, folly, allegory, female heroism, the supernatural and much more. Renaissance psychologies examines the distinct and polarised emphasis of these two towering intellects and writers of the early modern period. It demonstrates how pervasive was the influence of Spenser on Shakespeare, as in the "playful metamorphosis of Gloriana into Titania" in A Midsummer Night's Dream and its return from Spenser's moralizing allegory to the Ovidian spirit of Shakespeare's comedy. It will appeal to students and lecturers in Spenser studies, Renaissance poetry and the wider fields of British literature, social and cultural history, ethics and theology.

Collection of the best scholarly essays from the 2020 Southeastern Renaissance Conference plus essays submitted directly to the journal. Topics run from the epic to influence studies to the perennial problem of love and beyond. Renaissance Papers 2020 features essays from the conference held virtually at Mercer University, as well as essays submitted directly to the journal. The volume opens with an essay that discusses the "ultimate story," the epic, and argues, pointing to the Henriad and The Faerie Queen, that some of the most ambitious remain unfinished; an essay on "just war" and Henry V follows, suggesting why such epic inconclusion may not be such a bad thing. A trio of influence studies investigate post-Marian virginity, Miltonic environmentalism, and cross-dressing knights. Three essays then interrogate the perennial problem of love: in popular ballads, in Hero and Leander, and in The Rape of Lucrece. An essay argues counterintuitively for Amelia Lanyer and Margaret Cavendish as exemplars of the Cavalier Ideal of the Bonum Vitae; it is followed by an equally provocative reconsideration of the role of Claudio D'Arezzo's rhetorical works for Sicilian national identity. The last essay analyzes the formal signatures of three sixteenth-century queens and how they sought to represent themselves on the public stage.

Michael Kubovy, an experimental psychologist, recounts the lively history of the invention of perspective in the fifteenth century, and shows how, as soon as the invention spread, it was used to achieve subtle and fascinating aesthetic effects. A clear presentation of the fundamental concepts of perspective and the reasons for its effectiveness, drawing on the latest laboratory research on how people perceive, leads into the development of a new theory to explain why Renaissance artists such as Leonardo and Mantegna used perspective in unorthodox ways which have puzzled art scholars. This theory illuminates the author's broader consideration of the evolution of art: the book proposes a resolution of the debate between those who believe that the invention/discovery of perspective is a stage in the steady progress of art and those who believe that perspective is merely a conventional and arbitrary system for the representation of space.

A biography of Vittoria Colonna, a confidante of Michelangelo, the scion of one of the most powerful families of her era, and a pivotal figure in the Italian Renaissance Ramie Targoff’s Renaissance Woman tells of the most remarkable woman of the Italian Renaissance: Vittoria Colonna, Marchesa of Pescara. Vittoria has long been celebrated by scholars of Michelangelo as the artist’s best friend—the two of them exchanged beautiful letters, poems, and works of art that bear witness to their intimacy—but she also had close ties to Charles V, Pope Clement VII and Pope Paul III, Pietro Bembo, Baldassare Castiglione, Pietro Aretino, Queen Marguerite de Navarre, Reginald Pole, and Isabella d’Este, among others. Vittoria was the scion of an immensely powerful family in Rome during that city’s most explosively creative era. Art and literature flourished, but political and religious life were under terrific strain. Personally involved with nearly every major development of this period—through both her marriage and her own talents—Vittoria was not only a critical political actor and negotiator but also the first woman to publish a book of poems in Italy, an event that launched a revolution for Italian women’s writing. Vittoria was, in short, at the very heart of what we celebrate when we think about sixteenth-century Italy; through her story the Renaissance comes to life anew.

An exploration of the genesis and early development of the genre of self-portraiture in Italy in the 15th and 16th centuries. The author examines a series of self-portraits in Renaissance Italy, arguing that they represented the aspirations of their creators to change their social standing.

Annual volume of the best essays submitted to the Southeastern Renaissance Conference, this year with an emphasis on English drama and the cultural anxieties it expresses.

A man's sexual nature, like all else that is most essential in him, is rooted in a soil that was formed very long before his birth. In this, as in every other respect, he draws the elements of his life from his ancestors, however new the recombination may be and however greatly it may be modified by subsequent conditions. A man's destiny stands not in the future but in the past. That, rightly considered, is the most vital of all vital facts. Every child thus has a right to choose his own ancestors. Naturally he can only do this vicariously, through his parents. It is the most serious and sacred duty of the future father to choose one half of the ancestral and hereditary character of his future child; it is the most serious and sacred duty of the future mother to make a similar choice.[1] In choosing each other they have between them chosen the whole ancestry of their child. They have determined the stars that will rule his fate. In the past that fateful determination has usually been made helplessly, ignorantly, almost unconsciously. It has either been guided by an instinct which, on the whole, has worked out fairly well, or controlled by economic interests of the results of which so much cannot be said, or left to the risks of lower than bestial chances which can produce nothing but evil. In the future we cannot but have faith—for all the hope of humanity must rest on that faith—that a new guiding impulse, reinforcing natural instinct and becoming in time an inseparable accompaniment of it, will lead civilized man on his racial course. Just as in the past the race has, on the whole, been moulded by a natural, and in part sexual, selection, that was unconscious of itself and ignorant of the ends it made towards, so in the future the race will be moulded by deliberate selection, the creative energy of Nature becoming self-conscious in the civilized brain of man. This is not a faith which has its source in a vague hope. The problems of the individual life are linked on to the fate of the racial life, and again and again we shall find as we ponder the individual questions we are here concerned with, that at all points they ultimately converge towards this same racial end. Since we have here, therefore, to follow out the sexual relationships of the individual as they bear on society, it will be convenient at this point to put aside the questions of ancestry and to accept the individual as, with hereditary constitution already determined, he lies in his mother's womb.

These essays by one of America's foremost historians of art and architecture range over theory and criticism, the search for connections between art and science in the Renaissance, and specific works of Renaissance architecture. The largest group of essays, dealing with the character of Renaissance architecture, are models of art historical scholarship in their direct approach to identifying the essentials of a building and the social and intellectual context in which they should be viewed. Another group of essays explores encounters between the traditions of artistic practice and early optics and color theory. The three essays that begin this collection bring to light the intellectual and moral concerns that underlie all of Ackerman's art historical work.