HEALTHY LIVING IN LATE RENAISSANCE ITALY by Sandra Cavallo, Tessa Storey ( 9780199678136 )

Item Details

Title:

HEALTHY LIVING IN LATE RENAISSANCE ITALY

By:

Sandra Cavallo, Tessa Storey

Format:

Hardback

List price:

£130.00

Our price:

£126.10

Discount:

3% off

You save:

£3.90

ISBN 10:

0199678138

ISBN 13:

9780199678136

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Publisher:

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Pub. date:

28 November, 2013

Pages:

336

Description:

Explores in detail the efforts made by men and women in late Renaissance Italy to stay healthy and prolong their lives.

Synopsis:

Healthy Living in Late Renaissance Italy explores in detail the efforts made by men and women in late Renaissance Italy to stay healthy and prolong their lives. Drawing on a wide variety of sources - ranging from cheap healthy living guides in the vernacular to personal letters, conduct literature, household inventories, and surviving images and objects - this volume demonstrates that a sophisticated culture of prevention was being developed in sixteenth-century Italian cities. This culture sought to regulate the factors thought to influence health, and centred particularly on the home and domestic routines such as sleep patterns, food and drink consumption, forms of exercise, hygiene, control of emotions, and monitoring the air quality to which the body was exposed. Concerns about healthy living also had a substantial impact on the design of homes and the dissemination of a range of household objects. This study thus reveals the forgotten role of medical concerns in shaping everyday life and domestic material culture. However, medicine was not the sole factor responsible for these changes.The surge of interest in preventive medicine received new impetus from the development of the print industry. Moreover, it was fuelled by classical notions of wellbeing, re-proposed by humanist culture and by the new interest in geography and climates. Broader social and religious trends also played a key role; most significantly, the nexus between attention to one's health and spiritual and moral worth promoted both by new ideas of what constituted nobility and by the Counter-Reformation. Six key areas were thought to influence the balance of 'humours' within the body and Healthy Living in Late Renaissance Italy is organised into six main chapters which reflect these concerns: Air, Exercise, Sleep, Food and Drink, Managing the Emotions, and Bodily Hygiene. The volume is richly illustrated, and offers an accessible but fascinating glimpse into both the domestic lives and health preoccupations of the early modern Italians.

Illustrations:

numerous black & white and colour images

Publication:

Imprint:

Oxford University Press

Prizes:

Winner of Winner of the Roland H. Bainton Prize for History 2014.

Returns:

Returnable

Some other items by this author:

A CULTURAL HISTORY OF CHILDHOOD AND FAMILY IN THE EARLY MODERN AGE (HB)

A CULTURAL HISTORY OF CHILDHOOD AND FAMILY IN THE EARLY MODERN AGE (PB)