Early narratives have tended to be critiqued as novels, an approach that misses their distinctive Renaissance realism. Alastair Fowler surveys picturing and perspective from the fifteenth century to the eighteenth, drawing analogies between literature and visual art. The book is based on the history of the narrative imagination after single-point perspective. The habit of an older, multi-point perspective long continued, accounting for "anachronism," discontinuous realism, "double time-schemes," and depiction of different moments as simultaneous.

In this exciting book, Athanasios Moulakis makes available, for the first time in English, the important essay How to Bring Order to Popular Government, by Renaissance thinker Francesco Guicciardini. In addition to his valuable and lucid translation of the essay, Moulakis provides an engaging analysis of this important work. He shows that, far from representing a revival of ancient republicanism, the long maturation of Florentine constitutional thought_brought to lucid expression by Guicciardini_points to a distinctly modern idea of the republican state. Republican Realism in Renaissance Florence is a unique and important book which will be of great value to historians and political theorists alike.

The novelists of the Harlem Renaissance began writing at a point in America's literary history when the romantic tradition was being set aside for the gutsy truth-telling of realist literature. Modern criticism seems to take the flowery, nineteenth century prose found in the works of Chesnutt, Dunbar, Du Bois and others as an indication that they were writing in the romantic style. This is understandable but flawed. Almost all of the stories written during the Renaissance contained references to slavery or to Post Reconstructionist violence. For that reason few stories stemming from this period and written by African-Americans can be said to be "romantic."

The concept of a 'Renaissance' in the arts, in thought, and in more general culture North of the Alps often evokes the idea of a cultural transplant which was not indigenous to, or rooted in, the society from which it emerged. Classic definitions of the European 'Renaissance' during the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries have seen it as what was in effect an Italian import into the Gothic North. Yet there were certainly differences, divergences and dichotomies between North and South which have to be addressed. Here, Malcolm Vale argues for a Northern Renaissance which, while cognisant of Italian developments, displayed strong continuities with the indigenous cultures of northern Europe. But it also contributed novelties and innovations which often tended to stem from, and build upon, those continuities. A Short History of the Renaissance in Northern Europe – while in no way ignoring or diminishing the importance of the Hellenic and Roman legacy – seeks other sources, and different uses of classical antiquity, for a rather different kind of 'Renaissance', if such it was, in the North.

This book examines how mid-twentieth-century intellectuals' engagement with the Middle Ages shaped politics, art, and history.

Ecological crises have never been higher on the international political agenda. However, ecological thought and international relations theory have developed as separate disciplines. This ground-breaking study looks at the relationship between ecological thought and international relations theory arguing that there are shared concerns: peace, co-operation and security. The authors ask what ecological crisis can teach IR theorists as well as what ecological perspectives have been adopted by governments and international NGOs.

The fifteenth century saw the evolution of a distinct and powerfully influential European artistic culture. But what does the familiar phrase Renaissance Art actually refer to? Through engaging discussion of timeless works by artists such as Jan van Eyck, Leonardo da Vinci, and Michelangelo, and supported by illustrations including colour plates, Tom Nichols offers a masterpiece of his own as he explores the truly original and diverse character of the art of the Renaissance.

This book demonstrates the pervading influence of visual art in the composition, production and reception of Renaissance English drama.