The Penguin Book Of The Renaissance

The dawn of the Renaissance - The prince and the state - Machiavelli - The arts - The young Michelangelo - Florence : cradle of humanism - Guilds - ; Lorenzo de' Meduci Milan : city of strife - Leonardo da Vinci - Rome : splendour and the papacy - Pope Pius II; Venice : the golden years - Doge Francesco Foscari - The images of man - Federigo da Montefeltro - The spread of the Renaissancenc_____________

On the one hand it produced the tender work of Giotto and the brilliance of a Leonardo; on the other, it encompassed the atrocities of a Borgia, the fanaticism of a Savonarola and the cynicism of a Machiavelli. Civil disorders, political violence, religious discord and deep-seated corruption provided a setting in which genius flowered and where virtuosity, originality and an explosive energy shone through in politics, in art, in thought and even in murder.

The era between the accession of Henry VIII and the crisis of the English republic in 1659 formed one of the most fertile epochs in world literature. This anthology offers a broad selection of its poetry, and includes a wide range of works by the great poets of the age - notably Sir Philip Sidney, Edmund Sepnser, John Donne, William Shakespeare and John Milton. Poems by less well-known writers also feature prominently - among them significant female poets such as Lady Mary Wroth and Katherine Philips. Compelling and exhilarating, this landmark collection illuminates a time of astonishing innovation, imagination and diversity.

The walking dead from 15 centuries haunt this compendium of ghostly visitations through the ages, exploring the history of our fascination with zombies and other restless souls. Since ancient times, accounts of supernatural activity have mystified us. Ghost stories as we know them did not develop until the late nineteenth century, but the restless dead haunted the premodern imagination in many forms, as recorded in historical narratives, theological texts, and personal letters. The Penguin Book of the Undead teems with roving hordes of dead warriors, corpses trailed by packs of barking dogs, moaning phantoms haunting deserted ruins, evil spirits emerging from burning carcasses in the form of crows, and zombies with pestilential breath. Spanning from the Hebrew scriptures to the Roman Empire, the Scandinavian sagas to medieval Europe, the Protestant Reformation to the Renaissance, this beguiling array of accounts charts our relationship with spirits and apparitions, wraiths and demons over fifteen hundred years, showing the evolution in our thinking about the ability of dead souls to return to the realm of the living—and to warn us about what awaits us in the afterlife. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.