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A social history of the Italian Renaissance (1300-1560) in a cultural key. Using tales, poems, prayers and letters as primary sources, Lauro Martines probes religious sensibilities, love, alienation, explosive feeling against political authority, the moral strains of patronage and the close ways of urban neighbourhoods. Case studies of suicide and the seduction of propertied women sharpen the analysis. By moving behind literary posture and metaphor, Martines exposes the power of local angers, fears, and loyalties, of misogyny, cruelty and women's space. The vitality of urban experience in Renaissance Italy passes before us, as we see the language of literature giving form and immediacy to the emotions of everyday life.