The Ambassador and the Courtesan : Political Bodies in Renaissance Italy (The Early Modern Exchange)

De Santo, Paola

University of Delaware Press（2026/03発売）

• 製本 Hardcover:ハードカバー版／ページ数 252 p.
• 言語 ENG
• 商品コード 9781644534168
• DDC分類 850.9002

Full Description

Drawing on literature, legal texts, and archival materials, The Ambassador and the Courtesan offers a comparative analysis of these two emerging roles in the early modern period and in Renaissance Italian society. While these two figures may appear unrelated, this book demonstrates their shared relation to the body politic, including the relationship of their very bodies to that metaphorical body. One imagines the early modern ambassador as traveling from one center of power to another, gathering news and disseminating it in writing, as well as negotiating in person. The courtesan, in contrast, is normally imagined employing her body in the service of entertaining elite clients in the enclosed space of the urban salon. These characterizations reinforce their very different roles in Renaissance Italian society and culture, but by placing them in dialogue, salient points of convergence emerge detailing how they were integral to the concurrent emergence of a modern subjectivity of the individual and the formation of the modern state.

Contents

Acknowledgments ix
Introduction: The Politics of Dual Identity 1
1 From Mind to Body: Formation and Narration of the
Early Modern Ambassador 16
2 Ambassadors in "Utopia" 52
3 Tasso's Messengers: Ambassadors and Poets 82
4 Armida's Mission: Reconciling Body and Language 112
5 Controlling Her Corpus: The Courtesan as Political
Writer 144
Notes 179
Bibliography 217
Index 000