About this product

Product Identifiers

PublisherUniversity of Toronto Press

ISBN-10080209922X

ISBN-139780802099228

eBay Product ID (ePID)6038446959

Product Key Features

Number of Pages176 Pages

Publication NameBeasts and Beauties : Animals, Gender, and Domestication in the Italian Renaissance

LanguageEnglish

Publication Year2010

SubjectCivilization, Men's Studies, Gender Studies, Europe / Renaissance, Women's Studies, Animals / General, Movements / Humanism, Sociology / Marriage & Family

TypeTextbook

Subject AreaNature, Philosophy, Social Science, History

AuthorJuliana Schiesari

SeriesToronto Italian Studies

FormatHardcover

Dimensions

Item Height0.6 in

Item Weight14.1 Oz

Item Length9.4 in

Item Width6.3 in

Additional Product Features

Intended AudienceScholarly & Professional

LCCN2010-286233

Dewey Edition22

Reviews'Beasts and Beautiesargues that Italian humanists constructed a domestic space that both reinforced a hierarchy of being in which the European male occupied the supreme position and functioned as a site of resistance where the first post-humanist critiques were born. By positioning the works of well-known humanists such as Petrarch and Alberti within the discourse of domesticity, Juliana Schiesari productively examines literature, art, and social practices in order to analyse what verbal and visual representations of animals can reveal about the construction of gender, race, and class in early modern Italy.' --Suzanne Magnanini, Department of French and Italian, University of Colorado, Boulder

Grade FromCollege Graduate Student

IllustratedYes

Dewey Decimal306.850945/09031

Table Of ContentTable of Contents Introduction 3 1. "Jewels of Women": Ladies, Laps and Lapdogs in Renaissance Culture 21 2. Portrait of the Poet as a Dog: Petrarch's Epistola Metrica III, 5 47 3. Alberti's Cavallo Vivo, or The "Art" of Domination 65 4. Della Porta's Face of Domestication: Physiognomy, Gender Politics and Humanism's Others 82 5. Psychoanalytic Intermezzo: Freud's Missed Reading of Leonardo's Alternative Humanism 112 6. Versions of Diana: Gender and Renaissance Mythography 135

SynopsisThe question of what it means to be human has preoccupied thinkers since antiquity. The classical humanism of the Italian Renaissance saw humanity as hierarchical, with elite European males at the apex while women, lower class or foreign men, and animals occupied varying lesser degrees of being. Using the theme of domestication to interrogate the intertwined notions of femininity, sexuality, and animality, Juliana Schiesari looks to early modern Italy to uncover the origins of the modern conception of the human. Beasts and Beauties examines the relationship between domesticity and power by focusing on the contemporaneous development of two phenomena - the invention of the 'pet' and the delineation of the home as a uniquely private enclosure, where the pater familias ruled over his own secluded world of domesticated wife, children, servants, and animals. Drawing upon canonical works and authors of the Italian Renaissance, Schiesari discusses how the figure of the animal resituates these works and provides a fresh perspective to how we as human beings perceive ourselves in relation to the world., The question of what it means to be human has preoccupied thinkers since antiquity. The classical humanism of the Italian Renaissance saw humanity as hierarchical, with elite European males at the apex while women, lower class or foreign men, and animals occupied varying lesser degrees of being. Using the theme of domestication to interrogate the intertwined notions of femininity, sexuality, and animality, Juliana Schiesari looks to early modern Italy to uncover the origins of the modern conception of the human. Beasts and Beautiesexamines the relationship between domesticity and power by focusing on the contemporaneous development of two phenomena - the invention of the 'pet' and the delineation of the home as a uniquely private enclosure, where the pater familias ruled over his own secluded world of domesticated wife, children, servants, and animals. Drawing upon canonical works and authors of the Italian Renaissance, Schiesari discusses how the figure of the animal resituates these works and provides a fresh perspective to how we as human beings perceive ourselves in relation to the world., Beasts and Beauties examines the relationship between domesticity and power by focusing on the contemporaneous development of the invention of the 'pet' and the delineation of the home as a uniquely private enclosure, where the pater familias ruled over his own secluded world of domesticated wife, children, servants, and animals.

LC Classification NumberHQ630.S35 2010