Jacopo Passavanti: The Mirror of True Penitence presents a complete English translation of Jacopo Passavanti’s unfinished summa on penitence – an essential yet often overlooked work of 14th-century religious thought. Based on his 1354 Lenten sermons at the church of Santa Maria Novella in Florence, this book organizes and expands Passavanti’s teachings into a structured guide on sin, confession, and repentance, making them accessible beyond the fleeting moment of oral del...

The essays in this volume revisit the Italian Renaissance to rethink spaces thought to be defined and certain: from the social spaces of convent, court, or home, to the literary spaces of established genres such as religious plays or epic poetry. Repopulating these spaces with the women who occupied them but have often been elided in the historical record, the essays also remind us to ask what might obscure our view of texts and archives, what has remained marginal in the texts and context...

Long celebrated as one of "the Three Crowns" of Florence, Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–75) experimented widely with the forms of literature. His prolific and innovative writings—which range beyond the novella, from lyric to epic, from biography to mythography and geography, from pastoral and romance to invective—became powerful models for authors in Italy and across the Continent.This collection of essays presents Boccaccio's life and creative output in its encyclopedic diversity. Expl...