Bøker i Elements in the Renaissance-serien

This Element explores the longest spell that can be computed from quantifiable fiscal records when the gap between rich and poor narrowed. It was the post-Black-Death century, c. 1375 to c. 1475. Threatened by economic equality after the Black Death, elites turned primarily to political and cultural spheres to preserve their distinctions.

This Element contributes to the expanding field of early modern cultural studies in a global perspective by exploring how costume books and albums participated in the shaping of a new visual culture that displayed the diversity of the people of the known world on a variety of media.

Cinderella's Glass Slipper studies Renaissance material cultures through the literary prism of fairy-tale objects. The literary fairy-tale first arose in Renaissance Venice, originating from oral story-telling traditions that would later become the Arabian Nights, and subsequently in the Parisian salons of Louis XIV. Largely written by, for, and in the name of women, these literary fairy-tales took a lightly comic view of life's vicissitudes, especially female fortune in marriage. Connecting literary representations of bridal goods - dress, jewellery, carriages, toiletries, banqueting and confectionary foods - to the craft histories of their making, this Element offers a newly-contextualised socio-economic account of Renaissance luxe, from architectural interiors to sartorial fashioning and design. By coupling Renaissance luxury wares with their fairy-tale representation, it locates the recherche materialities of bridal goods - gold, silver, diamonds and silk - within expanding colonialist markets of a newly-global early modern economy in the age of discovery.

The Renaissance was a highly mobile, turbulent era in Europe, when war, poverty, and persecution pushed many people onto the roads in search of a living or a safe place to settle. In the same period, the expansion of European states overseas opened up new avenues of long-distance migration, while also fuelling the global traffic in slaves. The accelerating movement of people stimulated commercial, political, religious, and artistic exchanges, while also prompting the establishment of new structures of control and surveillance. This Element illuminates the material and social mechanisms that enacted mobility in the Renaissance and thereby offers a new way to understand the period's dynamism, creativity, and conflict. Spurred by recent 'mobilities' studies, it highlights the experiences of a wide range of mobile populations, paying particular attention to the concrete, practical dimensions of moving around at this time, whether on a local or a global scale.