Nuns' Chronicles and Convent Culture in Renaissance and Counter-Reformation Italy

Nuns' Chronicles and Convent Culture in Renaissance and Counter-Reformation Italy

This well-illustrated and innovative book analyses convent culture in sixteenth-century Italy through the medium of three unpublished nuns' chronicles. The book uses a... Les mer

Nuns' Chronicles and Convent Culture in Renaissance and Counter-Reformation Italy

This well-illustrated and innovative book analyses convent culture in sixteenth-century Italy through the medium of three unpublished nuns' chronicles. The book uses a comparative methodology of 'connected differences' to examine the intellectual and imaginative achievement of the nuns, and to investigate how they fashioned and preserved individual and convent identities by writing chronicles. The chronicles themselves reveal many examples of nuns' agency, especially with regard to cultural creativity, and show that convent traditions determined cultural priorities and specialisms, and dictated the contours of convent ceremonial life.

Introduction; Part I. History Writing and Authorship: 1. The creation of chronicles: contents and appearance; 2. The authors of the chronicles; Part II. Historical and Cultural Context: 3. The convents and physical space; 4. Nuns and convent communities; 5. Rules and traditions; Part III. Chronicles and the Culture of Convent Identity: 6. The chronicles and ceremonial life; 7. Cultural creativity and cultural production; 8. Convents and art; Conclusion.

Kate Lowe is Reader in the Department of Historical and Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths College, University of London. Lukk