Overview

Richard C. Trexler (1932-2007) was one of our era’s most original historians. His modest description of himself as “a social historian with an interest in cultural history” hardly does justice to a career that covered fields as diverse as church history, urban history, historical anthropology and sociology, art history, gender and sexuality studies, and early modern Latin America. The seventeen articles in this collection are inspired by Trexler’s scholarly achievements and pay tribute to a scholar who never tired of pursuing new questions, overturning received assumptions, and sharing his enthusiasm for research with his colleagues and students.

Peter Arnade is professor of history at California State University, San Marcos.

Michael Rocke is the Nicky Mariano Librarian of the Biblioteca Berenson at Villa I Tatti, the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies (Florence).

364 pp. 
ISBN: 978-0-7727-2041-2 softcover, 978-0-7727-2047-4 hardcover
Published: 2008

Reviews

“This volume brings together a collection of excellent scholars whose aim is less to duplicate or confirm Trexler’s results than to follow his modus operandi—that is, to find the cross-cultural issues at the cutting edge of the discipline and experiment methodologically in order to twist things up, down, and around so as to extract more insight and meaning out of them than more conventional methods—or scholars—could discover.”
— Nicholas Terpstra, University of Toronto

“This is a rich collection of articles that pursues some of the central themes of Trexler’s extraordinary body of scholarship. The diverse topics discussed in the volume reflect Trexler’s own work and interests—from Renaissance Italy to pre-colonial Mexico, from youth culture to religious culture, from ceremony to politics.”
— Carol Lansing, University of California, Santa Barbara

The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 62:2 (April 2011), pp. 393-394. Reviewed by Thomas Betteridge.

Americas: A Quarterly Review of Inter-American Cultural History, 67:3 (January 2011), pp. 412-413. Reviewed by Linda A. Curcio-Nagy.

The Sixteenth Century Journal, 41:4 (Winter 2010), pp. 1185-1187. Reviewed by Kiril Petkov. (Hard copy available at CRRS.)

The Catholic Historical Review, 96:2 (April 2010), pp. 312-315. Reviewed by Steven G. Reinhardt.

Renaissance Quarterly, 62:3 (Fall 2009), pp. 956-957. Reviewed by Joseph M. Gonzalez.

Annali d’Italianistica, 27 (2009), pp. 384-386. Reviewed by Kathy Johnston-Keane.

Contents

Illustrations

Preface

1. Edward Muir, “Trexleriana: An Introduction"

I. Renaissance Italy
2. Karen-edis Barzman, “Islamic North Africa in Trecento Florence: Costume in the Assisi and Bardi Chapel Frescoes of Francis in Egypt"
3. Lyn A. Blanchfield, “Le Piagnoni: The Weeping Women of Savonarola"
4. Konrad Eisenbichler, “Adolescence and Damnation: Sin and Youth in Florentine Confraternities"
5. Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, “The Devil in Prison"
6. Michael Rocke, “‘Whoorish boyes’: Male Prostitution in Early Modern Italy and the Spurious ‘Second Part’ of Antonio Vignali’s La Cazzaria"
7. John M. Najemy, “Alberti on Love: Musings on Private Transgression and Public Discipline"
8. Dana E. Stewart, “Poetic and Scientific Discourse in the Early Italian Lyric"

II. Early Modern Political and Religious Rituals
9. Peter J. Arnade, “Spanish Furies: The Siege and Sack of Cities in the Dutch Revolt"
10. Samuel K. Cohn Jr., “The Power of Flags in Late Medieval Popular Revolt" 11. Klaus Schreiner, “Our Lady of Victory: Images of Mary within Military Contexts in the Late Middle Ages and Early Modernity"
12. Joëlle Rollo-Koster, “Empty See and Ritual Pillaging During the Middle Ages"

III. Gender and Collective Representations in the Americas
13. Louise M. Burkhart, “Humour in Baroque Nahuatl Drama"
14. Cecelia F. Klein, “The Aztec Sacrifice of Tezcatlipoca and Its Implications for Christ Crucified"
15. Pete Sigal, “The Perfumed Man: Sacrifice, Penetration, and the Feminization of the Male Body in Sixteenth-Century Mesoamerica"

IV. Nationalism and Historiography in the Modern World
16. Anthony Molho, “Exile and the Values of Western Civilization: German Jewish Historians and American Studies on the Renaissance”
17. Mahnaz Yousefzadeh, “Anti-Hegemonic Nationalism: The Dante Centenary of 1865”