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Redreaming the Renaissance seeks to remedy the dearth of conversations between scholars of history and literary studies by building on the pathbreaking work of Guido Ruggiero to explore the cross-fertilization between these two disciplines, using the textual world of the Italian Renaissance as proving ground. In this volume, these disciplines blur, as they did for early moderns, who did not always distinguish between the historical and literary significance of the texts they read and produced. Literature here is broadly conceived to include not only belles lettres, but also other forms of artful writing that flourished in the period, including philosophical writings on dreams and prophecy; life-writing; religious debates; menu descriptions and other food writing; diaries, news reports, ballads, and protest songs; and scientific discussions. The twelve essays in this collection examine the role that the volume's dedicatee has played in bringing the disciplines of history and literary studies into provocative conversation, as well as the methodology needed to sustain and enrich this conversation.

'Knowing'itself is a problematic concept and what was once seen as the clear objective of'knowing,'that is to discover'truth'or'reality,'has become increasingly less certain. This is even more the case when scholars move from the present to examine epistemology in the past. Two fundamental questions arise: What constituted knowledge in the context of early modern Germany and how was knowledge gathered, assembled, organized, deployed, and interpreted? Ways of Knowing seeks to answer these questions. Taking their cues from a range of interdisciplinary perspectives, including art, German literature, social, political, medical, and religious history, the contributors offer readers a rich and insightful portrait of knowing and knowledge in early modern Germany. Investigators look at what people “knew” in early modern Germany and how they “knew” it. Four essays in part one consider how knowledge was created and organized. In part two, six authors examine how knowledge was evaluated and how it functioned, especially in the realms of belief, law, politics, and medicine.Contributors include: Robert Beachy, Susan R. Boettcher, Jason Coy, Pia F. Cuneo, Mitchell Lewis Hammond, Mary Lindemann, Francisca Loetz, Terence McIntosh, Janice L. Neri, Elisabeth Wåghäll Nivre, and Helen Watanabe-O'Kelly.

The significant changes in early modern German marriage practices included many unions that violated some taboo. That taboo could be theological and involve the marriage of monks and nuns, or refer to social misalliances as when commoners and princes (or princesses) wed. Equally transgressive were unions that crossed religious boundaries, such as marriages between Catholics and Protestants, those that violated ethnic or racial barriers, and those that broke kin-related rules. Taking as a point of departure Martin Luther's redefinition of marriage, the contributors to this volume spin out the multiple ways that the Reformers'attempts to simplify and clarify marriage affected education, philosophy, literature, high politics, diplomacy, and law. Ranging from the Reformation, through the ages of confessionalization, to the Enlightenment, Mixed Matches addresses the historical complexity of the socio-cultural institution of marriage.

The Merchant Republics analyzes the ways in which three major economic powerhouses - Amsterdam, Antwerp and Hamburg - developed dual identities as'communities of commerce'and as republics over the course of the long eighteenth century (c.1648–1790). In addition to discussing the qualities that made these three cities alike, this volume also considers the very real differences that derived from their dissimilar histories, political structures, economic fates and cultural expectations. While all valued both their republicanism and their merchant identities, each presented a different face to the world and each made the transition from an early modern republic to a modern city in a different manner.

Liaisons dangereuses examines the local and international repercussions of a notorious episode in eighteenth-century Hamburg. Historian Mary Lindemann recounts the mysterious circumstances surrounding the violent death of a counterfeit Milanese count, Joseph Visconti, at the hands of an erstwhile Prussian lieutenant, the Baron von Kesslitz. Reconstructing the drama from the perspectives of four principal players—the count, the baron, an Italian/French courtesan, Anna Maria Romellini, and Antoine Ventura de Sanpelayo, the Spanish consul in Hamburg—Lindemann explores the historical currents that swept these individuals together and the effects of their encounter on Hamburg's public, its government, and its diplomatic and economic relationships with European courts and states. Lindemann profiles each person involved in the crime, exploring their lives as unique sets of circumstances while analyzing them as eighteenth-century types. What actually took place on that fateful night in October 1775? All Hamburg buzzed with rumors, but it is impossible to determine without doubt the motives of those involved, or even to know what really happened. Nevertheless, the case that developed around the killing of Visconti provides fascinating insights into the diplomatic, cultural, legal, social, and political history of the last third of the eighteenth century.

Patriots and Paupers carefully analyzes a crucial juncture in the history of a great city: Hamburg's passage from the pre-modern into the modern world. Despite the relative wealth of historical literature on Reformation Germany and on Germany after unification, few English-language histories have addressed the events of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Mary Lindemann here details issues associated with poor relief--indigency, mendicancy, public health, labor regulation, social control, and disciplining--then uses these as springboards to broader historical debates. She draws out the subtle yet decisive political shift from the paternalistic dirigismé of a government of fathers and uncles to the socio-economic laissez-faire of early liberalism, and locates this political metamorphosis firmly within the framework of Hamburg's dynamic economic development and dramatic demographic growth. She links these political and social changes to the intellectual, cultural, and prosopographical contexts of the German Enlightenment. Far more than a history of poverty and social welfare policies, Patriots and Paupers explores the critical interconnections between economics, demographics, social change, and government in the closing years of the European Old Regime.