The World of Renaissance Italy: A Daily Life Encyclopedia engages all of the Italian peninsula from the Black Death (1347–1352) to 1600. Unlike other encyclopedic works about the Renaissance era, this book deals exclusively with Italy, revealing the ways common Italian people lived and experienced the events and technological developments that marked the Renaissance era. The coverage specifically spotlights marginal or traditionally marginalized groups, including women, homosexuals, Jews, the elderly, and foreign communities in Italian cities.
The entries in this two-volume set are organized into 10 sections of 25 alphabetically listed entries each. Among the broad sections are art, fashion, family and gender, food and drink, housing and community, politics, recreation and social customs, and war. The “See Also” sources for each article are listed by section for easy reference, a feature that students and researchers will greatly appreciate. The extensive collection of contemporary documents include selections from a diary, letters, a travel journal, a merchant’s inventory, Inquisition testimony, a metallurgical handbook, and text by an artist that describes what the author feels constitutes great work. Each of the primary source documents accompanies a specific article and provides an added dimension and degree of insight to the material.
- Synthesizes the latest research and publication in the Italian Renaissance era by the top scholars in their respective historical fields
- Covers a range of types of people and issues rarely covered in other books on the Italian Renaissance and supplies detailed coverage that adds a social dimension to traditional topics such as art, religion, and war
- Authored by a prolific and highly regarded author of history texts, Joseph P. Byrne, PhD, who is expert in the Italian Renaissance
- Appropriate for advanced high school and undergraduate college students as well as general readers interested in the Renaissance period in Italy