Power and Imagination

Strong Words is a social history of the Italian Renaissance (1300-1560) in a cultural key. Using tales, poetry, prayer, and letters as prime sources, Lauro Martines probes religious sensibilities, love, alienation, explosive feeling against political authority, the moral strains of patronage, and the close ways of urban neighborhoods. Case studies of suicide and the seduction of propertied women sharpen the analysis. By moving behind literary posture and metaphor, Martines exposes the power of local angers, fears, and loyalties, of misogyny, cruelty, and female space. The vitality of urban experience in Renaissance Italy passes before us, as we see the language of literature giving form and immediacy to the emotions of everyday life.