At The Margins Of The Renaissance

Examines one of the first Renaissance novels to feature an ordinary man, not a nobleman or ancient hero, as the main character.

A distinctive history of the traditions of reading and life in the Renaissance library, as seen in the texts of Renaissance intellectuals

Images in the Margins is the third in the popular Medieval Imagination series of small, affordable books drawing on manuscript illumination in the collections of the J. Paul Getty Museum and the British Library. Each volume focuses on a particular theme and provides an accessible, delightful introduction to the imagination of the medieval world. An astonishing mix of mundane, playful, absurd, and monstrous beings are found in the borders of English, French, and Italian manuscripts from the Gothic era. Unpredictable, topical, often irreverent, like the New Yorker cartoons of today, marginalia were a source of satire, serious social observation, and amusement for medieval readers. Through enlarged, full-color details and a lively narrative, this volume brings these intimately scaled, fascinating images to a wider audience. It accompanies an exhibition on view at the J. Paul Getty Museum from September 1 through November 8, 2009.

Examines commentary written in the margins of the text to show how the pages of the first printed books became the arena for struggled among authors, readers, and cultural authorities. Focuses on four controversies: the printed English Bible, two rivals for court favor, Martin Marprelate's theological pamphlets, and the glossed works of Ben Jonson. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

This book throws new light on the complexity and variety of practices which may be defined as 'theatrical' in a broad sense in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English drama. The volume deals first with the mainstream of dramatic production, starting from the anti-theatrical debate which characterized the whole period and increased in intensity as it went on. Here Shakespeare and Ben Jonson come on stage with their rejoinders to this issue. At the same time, while the universities were offering a kind of theatre workshop importing Latin and Italian models, popular performances were being staged in non-theatrical spaces. Tournaments, and their aristocratic codes, are explored as well as more popular and 'marginal' spectacles - such as those of conny-catching improvisers, jugglers, gypsy dancers and fortune-tellers, clowns and prophetesses.

What do they all mean – the lascivious ape, autophagic dragons, pot-bellied heads, harp-playing asses, arse-kissing priests and somersaulting jongleurs to be found protruding from the edges of medieval buildings and in the margins of illuminated manuscripts? Michael Camille explores that riotous realm of marginal art, so often explained away as mere decoration or zany doodles, where resistance to social constraints flourished. Medieval image-makers focused attention on the underside of society, the excluded and the ejected. Peasants, servants, prostitutes and beggars all found their place, along with knights and clerics, engaged in impudent antics in the margins of prayer-books or, as gargoyles, on the outsides of churches. Camille brings us to an understanding of how marginality functioned in medieval culture and shows us just how scandalous, subversive, and amazing the art of the time could be.

A sideways look at books that sheds light on the activities of authors, printers, and readers during the English Renaissance

Maria Sibylla Merian, a German painter and naturalist, produced an innovative work on tropical insects based on lore she gathered from the Carib, Arawak, and African women of Suriname.

Seldom heard from in modern times, those on the margins of medieval Europe have much to tell about the society that defined them. Revealing more than just a fascinating cast of characters, this book gives insight into those figures who made medieval society uneasy.