Analyzes the literary trends of the Italian renaissance period.

Introduction / Harold Bloom -- Culture in Renaissance Florence / Gene A. Brucker -- Republican Venice: Concept and Myth / J.G.A. Pocock -- Interpretations of the Renaissance / Eugenio Garin -- Humanism and Scholasticism in the Italian Renaissance / Paul Oskar Kristeller -- Did Women Have a Renaissance? / Joan Kelly -- Renaissance World Views / Peter Burke -- The Italian View of Renaissance Italy / Denys Hay -- Politics and Aesthetics in Castiglione's Il Cortegiano / Carla Freccero -- Virtu and the Example of Agathocles in Machiavelli's Prince / Victoria Kahn -- From Pen to Print: Writers and Their Use of the Press / Brian Richardson -- Image and Text: The Paragone / Francis Ames-Lewis -- Civic Humanism and Florentine Politics / John M. Najemy -- The Debate Between Arms and Letters in Tasso's Gerusalemme liberata / David Quint -- The History of Ariosto's Orlando Furioso -- Alberto Casadei.