The concept of Venice as the 'most perfect republic' was a major part of the myth of Venice which reached its full flowering in the 16th century. This myth in turn fed utopian visions of a unified world in which universal reformation and brotherhood would be the hallmark. The essays here examine the ideas and motivation of three Frenchmen of the 16th century, Jean Bodin, Guillaume Postel and Dionisio Gallo, who each made their own contribution to this conception of Venice and developed their own utopian ideals. Themes discussed are the foundations of Venetian toleration, the reasons for God's love of Venice above any other city, the relationship between charity and restitution, and the role of sexual dualism as a paradigm for the ideal state. Particular attention is given to the enigmatic figure of the 'Virgin of Venice'.

This study examines the thought of Guillaume Postel (1510-1581), a French religious thinker who relied on Jewish Kabbalah and its mystical understanding of gender to argue that a female messiah had arrived who would heal the political and religious conflicts of sixteenth-century Europe.

In this issue of The Shakespearean International Yearbook, the special section surveys various means of 'Updating Shakespeare'. The section treats a variety of attempts and strategies, including by artists in Japan, China and Brazil, to adapt Shakespeare's works into local and present circumstances. The guest editor for the section is Tetsuo Kishi, Professor Emeritus in English at the University of Kyoto, co-author of Shakespeare in Japan (2006). The Shakespearean International Yearbook continues to provide an annual survey of important issues and developments in contemporary Shakespeare studies. Contributors to this issue come from the US and the UK, Poland, Japan and Brazil. In addition to the section on 'Updating', essays in this volume treat Shakespeare's poems, his narrative strategies, his relation to ideas such as tolerance and representation, and the afterlives of his work in writers such as Gay, Slowacki and Becket, and in theatrical relics.

The authors have structured five centuries of utopian invention by identifying successive constellations, groups of thinkers joined by common social and moral concerns. Within this framework they analyze individual writings, in the context of the author's life and of the socio-economic, religious, and political exigencies of his time.

This book analyses early modern attitudes to tolerance, including religion, race, humour and sexuality, as they occur in Shakespeare's poems and plays.

Concentrating on the Habsburg Empire, this book examines the creation of cultural hierarchy in sixteenth-century Europe.

The Jewish community of early modern Venice was perhaps the leading Jewish community of its time. It emerged as a response to the desire of the Venetian government to make credit readily available and, toward the end of the 16th century, it greatly expanded as Venice, faced with a serious decline in its international maritime trade, adopted a policy of attracting Iberian New Christian merchants. Yet Jews were still treated as the Other and subjected to restrictions and discriminatory measures, including confinement to a segregated enclosed quarter; the 'ghetto'. Despite this, the interplay between economically motivated raison d'état and traditional religious hostility resulted in a delicate balance which enabled the Jewish community of Venice to assume a real leadership role in the world of the Iberian Jewish Diaspora. Based extensively on previously unconsulted documents, these articles deal with central issues in the experience of the Jews of Venice, and so of Diaspora Jewish history in general: the Jewish quarter, maritime trade and urban moneylending, the Jewish distinguishing head-covering, relations with church and state, the forced baptism of Jewish minors, the converso problem, and anti-Judaism.

Originally published between 1975 and 2003, the essays included in Humanism, Venice, and Women reflect Margaret L. King's distinct but interlocking scholarly interests: humanism and Venice; women and humanism; and women of the Italian Renaissance. The first part focuses on defining the key characteristics of Venetian as opposed to other Italian humanisms, with an analysis of Gramscian theory about the historical role of intellectuals as an aid to understanding humanism in Venice, followed by essays on three Venetian humanists who wrote about family relationships (or the need to avoid them). The third section introduces the major Renaissance women humanists and analyzes the relation of their work to that of male humanists, along with an essay on Renaissance mothers of sons, in Italy and beyond. Crossing boundaries of region and gender, and the subdisciplines of intellectual and social history, these essays are provocative in themselves while demonstrating how shifting historiographical contexts encourage scholars to view the historical record in new and fruitful ways.

This thoughtful and engaging book offers the first extended analysis of coups, a central factor shaping world history and politics. Ivan Perkins introduces a new theory to explain why a military coup or revolution is such an unthinkable prospect in advanced democracies. Focusing especially on the first three coup-free states—the Venetian Republic, Great Britain, and the United States—the book traces the evolutionary origins of political violence and the historical rise of republican government. Perkins concludes with a new explanation for the “democratic peace” and shows why coup-free states form enduring alliances.