Description

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In Power and Imagination, a noted historian rethinks the evolution of the city-state in Renaissance Italy and recasts the conventional distinction between "society" and "culture." Martines traces the growth of commerce and the evolution of governments; he describes the attitudes, pleasures, and rituals of the ruling elite; and he seeks to understand the period's towering works of the imagination in literature, painting, city planning, and philosophy-not simply as the creations of individual artists, but as the forman expression of the ambitions and egos of those in power.

About the Author

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Lauro Martines is a former professor of history at the University of California, Los Angeles. His many books include Society and History in English Renaissance Verse and Strong Words: Writing and Social Strain in the Italian Renaissance, the latter available from Johns Hopkins.