HIST 229: Spectacles of Power in Europe, 1550-1700 (HC)

Historians, art and theatre historians, musicologists, literary historians, historians of politics and diplomacy are becoming increasingly interested in court festivals as a source of information in the early-modern period. Such festivals are usually recorded in a printed account or festival book. This bibliography identifies these primary accounts.

A broad-based and accessible anthology of travel and colonial writing in the English Renaissance, selected to represent the world-picture of 16th- and 17th-century readers in England. It includes not just narratives of discovery but also accounts of cultures already well known through trade links, like Turkey, and places that featured mainly in stories including the Far East and Africa.

This book showcases a striking source on Renaissance swordsmanship. Hitherto unpublished and largely unknown, it is of central importance to a modern understanding of Italian rapier play in the sixteenth century. This book reproduces the forty-six red chalk illustrations in the manuscript--only three of which have ever been seen in print--together with a transcription and translation of the original Italian text.

Some 200 observers describe day-to-day events, ceremonies, intrigues and life at the French court at Versailles during the reign of Louis XIV.

Isaac de Benserade, a poet, playwright and French courtier, wrote libretti for royal ballets for Louis XIV. The ballets were performed at court by the nobility and, on occasion, the king as well. These two volumes provide Benserade's texts for these ballets including the Ballet Royal de Nuit. The tradition of ballets de cour can be traced back to the 16th century and the reign of Henri III.

This anthology provides a thorough introduction to the highpoint of British literary satire with texts from 30 satirists, including 11 women. The contents are expansive: with canonical, texts, less anthologized works by major satirists, and works by writers who have been traditionally excluded from anthologies.

The masque had a brief but splendid life as the dominant mode of entertainment at the early Stuart court, and it has increasingly come to be recognized as a genre offering a fascinating insight into the culture and politics of the early seventeenth century. This selection of 18 masque for Charles I, performed just before the outbreak of civil war. It also includes examples of entertainments performed on royal progresses, as well as one domestic masque.

This collection draws together over 60 extracts and 20 illustrations to establish and analyse how people grappled with mortality in the 16th and 17th centuries. In addition to the annotated and modernized excerpts, this study includes commentary on authors and texts and discussions of how each excerpt is expressive of the death arts.

Elizabeth put her linguistic skills to excellent use when she became Queen. Although she never left England, she wrote extensively to correspondents abroad, and her extant foreign correspondence ranges from the ceremonial to the religiously committed to the intimate and emotionally vulnerable. The relationships Elizabeth forged through these texts were of central importance to the diplomacy and politics of the period. This volume presents a study of the correspondence as well as newly edited texts and translations of nine of Elizabeth's holograph letters in foreign languages.

This is the first edition ever of the Queen's correspondence in Italian. These letters cast a new light on her talents as a linguist and provide interesting details as to her political agenda, and on the cultural milieu of her court. This book provides a fresh analysis of the surviving evidence concerning Elizabeth's learning and use of Italian, and of the activity of the members of her "Foreign Office." All of the documents transcribed here are accompanied by a short introduction focusing on their content and context, a brief description of their transmission history, and an English translation.

This is a facsimile reprint of a book Ogilby wrote and published in 1662. In it he commemorated the coronation of Charles II, drawing on a tradition of princely triumphal processions.

The editor extensively reconstructs the political and cultural circumstances in which the masques were performed for the French ambassador at the king’s behest.

Europa Triumphans represents the chronological and trans-European range of the court and civic festival. These festivals are considered not simply as texts, but as events, and are introduced by groups of scholars, each with a specialist knowledge of the political, social and cultural significance of the festival and of the iconography, spectacle, music, dance, voice and gesture in which they were expressed.

This is an annotated source bibliography of over 2,800 European court festival works. It allows access to many rare accounts of court festivals. Extensive indexes provide ruler's name, court name, territory, type of entertainment performed, composers and artists. There are numerous cross-references.

This collection of primary sources is organized around the human life cycle. Over 150 readings examine men and women from different social classes and different religious and racial groups, addressing sex and sexuality, food and drink, poverty, crime and punishment, religious tension and co-existence, and migration and emigration. Sources come from letters, wills, laws, diaries, fiction, and poems.

Presents 98 original sources dating from antiquity to the dawn of the Enlightenment and concerned with the natural world and humankind's place within it,

This book combines the 1549 text describing the king of France's ceremonial entry into the city of Lyon early in his reign with a detailed, scholarly introduction by Richard Cooper.

The vast wardrobe of Queen Elizabeth I is legendary: in her own time some of the richly embroidered gowns were displayed with other treasures to dazzle the eyes of foreign visitors to the Tower of London.

Considered the authority on Spain for nearly two centuries until historiographers labeled them as disreputable, Madame d'Aulnoy's Travels into Spain can now be appreciated for its ironic gaze on realities concealed from male travelers and the author's unabashedly female and often playful voice. Her account includes her reflections on the Spanish royal court.

Provides an introduction to the rich treasury of source material available to students of early modern history. During this period, political development, economic and social change, rising literacy levels, and the success of the printing press, ensured that the State, the Church and the people generated texts and objects on an unprecedented scale. This book introduces students to the sources that survived to become indispensable primary material studied by historians.