Books in the Transculturalisms, 1400-1700 series

Bringing to bear her extensive knowledge of the cultures of Renaissance Europe and sixteenth-century Mexico, Monica Dominguez Torres here investigates the significance of military images and symbols in post-Conquest Mexico. She shows how the "conquest" in fact involved dynamic exchanges between cultures.

Focuses on an important yet understudied feature of seventeenth-century England's political and cultural landscape: exile. Through an essentially literary lens, this title examines exile both as physical departure from England - to France, Germany, the Low Countries and America - and as inner, mental withdrawal.

Unprecedented in its range - extending from Venice to the New World and from the Holy Roman Empire to the Ottoman Empire - this collection probes the place that the Ottoman Turks occupied in the Western imaginaire, and the ways in which this occupation expressed itself in the visual arts. Individual essays in this volume examine specific images or groups of images, problematizing the ''truths'' they present and analyzing the contexts that shape the presentation of Ottoman or Islamic subject matter in European art. The contributors trace the transmission of early modern images and representations across national boundaries and across centuries to show how, through processes of translation that often involved multiple stages, the figure of the Turk (and by extension that of the Muslim) underwent a multiplicity of interpretations that reflect and reveal Western needs, anxieties and agendas. The essays reveal how anachronisms and inaccuracies mingled with careful detail to produce a "Turk," a figure which became a presence to reckon with in painting, sculpture, tapestry and printmaking.

A detailed examination of the relationship between the discourses and practices of authority and diplomacy in the late medieval and early modern periods, this volume interrogates the persistent duality of the roles of author and ambassador. Contributors analyze various forms of writing, including drama, poetry, diplomatic correspondence, peace treaties and household accounts; and a range of major literary figures, including Dante, Petrarch, Chaucer, Wyatt, Sidney and Spenser.

The first full length volume to approach the premodern Mediterranean from a fully interdisciplinary perspective, this collection defines the Mediterranean as a coherent region with distinct patterns of social, political, and cultural exchange. The essays explore the production, modification, and circulation of identities based on religion, ethnicity, profession, gender, and status as free or slave within three distinctive Mediterranean geographies: islands, entrep├┤ts and empires. Individual essays explore such topics as interreligious conflict and accommodation; immigration and diaspora; polylingualism; classical imitation and canon formation; traffic in sacred objects; Mediterranean slavery; and the dream of a reintegrated Roman empire. Integrating environmental, social, political, religious, literary, artistic, and linguistic concerns, this collection offers a new model for approaching a distinct geographical region as a unique site of cultural and social exchange.

Toward the end of the fifteenth century, the Habsburg family began to rely on dynastic marriage to unite an array of territories, eventually creating an empire as had not been seen in Europe since the Romans. Other European rulers followed the Habsburgs'' lead in forging ties through dynastic marriages. Because of these marriages, many more aristocrats (especially women) left their homelands to reside elsewhere. Until now, historians have viewed these unions from a primarily political viewpoint and have paid scant attention to the personal dimensions of these relocations. Separated from their family and thrust into a strange new land in which language, attire, religion, food, and cultural practices were often different, these young aristocrats were forced to conform to new customs or adapt their own customs to a new cultural setting. Early Modern Dynastic Marriages and Cultural Transfer examines these marriages as important agents of cultural transfer, emphasizing how marriages could lead to the creation of a cosmopolitan culture, common to the elites of Europe. These essays focus on the personal and domestic dimensions of early modern European court life, examining such areas as women''s devotional practices, fashion, patronage, and culinary traditions.

The essays collected here evaluate the broad range of contexts - from political thought and militarism to art and religion - in which images of Spain and Spanish culture were created by the inhabitants of the Italian peninsula in the sixteenth century.

Defining the Mediterranean as a coherent region with distinct patterns of social, political, and cultural exchange, this interdisciplinary collection explores the production, modification, and circulation of identities based on religion, ethnicity, profession, gender, within three distinctive Mediterranean geographies.

Exploring the reasons for a flurry of geographical works in the Ottoman Empire in the sixteenth century, this study analyzes how cartographers, travellers, astrologers, historians and naval captains promoted their vision of the world and the centrality of the Ottoman Empire in it.

Focusing on team translation and the production of multilingual editions, and on the difficulties these techniques created for Renaissance translation theory, this book interrogates textual practices that were widespread in medieval and Renaissance Europe but have been excluded from translation and literary history.

Working through the descriptive and ethnographic texts produced by Czech speakers about Islam and the Ottoman Empire, this study brings to light how they used this discourse to create Czech identities. Rather than simply constructing identity in opposition to the Islamic Other.

In this study, art historian Elizabeth Sutton reads the engravings of Pieter de Marees' Description and Historical Account of the Gold Kingdom of Guinea (1602) as a demonstration of the intertwining domains of the Dutch pictorial tradition, intellectual inquiry and Dutch mercantilism.

A detailed examination of the relationship between the discourses and practices of authority and diplomacy in the late medieval and early modern periods, this volume interrogates the persistent duality of the roles of author and ambassador. Contributors analyze various forms of writing, including drama, poetry, diplomatic correspondence.

Provides a perspective on how Western Europe made sense of a complex, multi-faceted, and by and large Sino-centered East and Southeast Asia. This title covers the transpacific period - after Magellan's opening of the transpacific route to the Far East and before the eventual dominance of the region by the British and the Dutch.

Focuses on the exciting period of French overseas exploration directly following the stagnation caused by the Wars of Religion. This book examines the early period of French involvement in Northeastern America through readings of key texts, principally travel and missionary accounts.

Focusing on the half-century period that began with the marriage of Mary Tudor to Prince Philip of Spain, and spanned the reigns of Philip II and Elizabeth I of England, this anthology demonstrates from the perspective of Spanish cultural history, the significant material, cultural, and symbolic contacts between England and Spain.

An exploration of early modern encounters between Christian Europe and the (Islamic) East from the perspective of performance studies and performativity theories, this collection offers new perspectives on how these cultural contacts were acted out on the real and metaphorical stages of theatre, literature, music, diplomacy and travel.

Based on travel writings, religious history and literature, this title explores the encounter between English travellers and the Jews. While literary and religious traditions created an image of Jews as untrustworthy, even sinister, travellers came to know them in their many and diverse communities with rich traditions and intriguing life-styles.

Offers an analysis of the cultural meanings of 'piracy'. By examining the often marginal figure of the pirate (and also the sometimes hard-to-distinguish privateer), this title shows how flexibly these figures served to comment on English nationalism, international relations, and contemporary politics.

Explores the subject of lenses, spectacles, aventurine glass, and windows found in China from the sixteenth century. This work traces their technological development back to the glassworks in Murano, Venice, and explores their significance in terms of Venice's commerce with China.

With its emphasis on early modern emissaries and their role in England's expansionary ventures and cross-cultural encounters across the globe, this collection of essays takes the messenger figure as a focal point for the discussion of transnational exchange and intercourse in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Covering the transpacific period--in between Magellan's opening of the transpacific route to the Far East and the eventual dominance of the region by the British and the Dutch--this collection provides a broad perspective on how Western Europe made sense of a complex, multi-faceted, and by and large Sino-centered East and Southeast Asia.

The prolific theatrical activity that abounded on the stages of early modern Europe demonstrates that drama was a genre that transcended national borders. The transnational character of early modern theater reflects the rich admixture of various dramatic traditions, such as Spain’s comedia and Italy’s commedia dell’arte, but also the transformations across cultures of Spanish novellas to French plays and English interludes. Of particular import to this study is the role that women and gender played in this cross-pollination of theatrical sources and practices. Contributors to the volume not only investigate the gendered effect of Spanish texts and literary types on English and French drama, they address the actual journeys of Spanish actresses to French theaters and of Italian actresses to the Spanish stage, while several emphasize the movement of royal women to various courts and their impact on theatrical activity in Spain and abroad. In their innovative focus on women’s participation and influence, the chapters in this volume illustrate the frequent yet little studied transnational and transcultural points of contact between Spanish theater and the national theaters of England, France, Austria, and Italy.