The Renaissance Discovery of Violence, from Boccaccio to Shakespeare

Robert Appelbaum

• Publisher: Anthem Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781839981470
• eBook ISBN: 9781839981494
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism for Comparative Literature
• Index: Literature

Many have wondered why the works of Shakespeare and other early modern writers are so filled with violence, with murder and mayhem. This work explains how and why, putting the literature of the European Renaissance in the context of the history of violence. Personal violence was on the decline in Europe beginning in the fifteenth century, but warfare became much deadlier and the stakes of war became much higher as the new nation-states vied for hegemony and the New World became a target of a shattering invasion. There are times when Renaissance writers seem to celebrate violence, but more commonly they anatomized it and were inclined to focus on victims as well as warriors on the horrors of violence as well as the need for force to protect national security and justice. In Renaissance writing, violence has lost its innocence.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• A Note on the Texts
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter One Overture: The Show of Violence
• Chapter Two The Moral Economy of Violence in the Renaissance Novella Collection: Straparola, Bandello and Marguerite de Navarre
• Chapter Three Pacifism, Erasmus and More
• Chapter Four Violence as Labor: The Heroic Narrative
• Chapter Five “Tragedy Shows us What We Must Flee From”
• Afterword
• Select Bibliography
• Index