Redreaming the Renaissance seeks to remedy the dearth of conversations between scholars of history and literary studies by building on the pathbreaking work of Guido Ruggiero to explore the cross-fertilization between these two disciplines, using the textual world of the Italian Renaissance as proving ground. In this volume, these disciplines blur, as they did for early moderns, who did not always distinguish between the historical and literary significance of the texts they read and produced. Literature here is broadly conceived to include not only belles lettres, but also other forms of artful writing that flourished in the period, including philosophical writings on dreams and prophecy; life-writing; religious debates; menu descriptions and other food writing; diaries, news reports, ballads, and protest songs; and scientific discussions. The twelve essays in this collection examine the role that the volume’s dedicatee has played in bringing the disciplines of history and literary studies into provocative conversation, as well as the methodology needed to sustain and enrich this conversation.

Mary Lindemann is professor emerita of history, University of Miami. Her most recent books include: Liaisons dangereuses: Sex, Law, and Diplomacy in the Age of Frederick the Great (2006), Medicine and Society in Early Modern Europe (2nd ed., 2009), and The Merchant Republics: Amsterdam, Antwerp, and Hamburg, 1648-1790 (2015). She is currently writing a book on the wars of the mid to late seventeenth century and especially their aftermath in Brandenburg.

Deanna Shemek is professor of Italian and European studies at the University of California, Irvine. She is author of Ladies Errant: Wayward Women and Social Order in Early Modern Italy (1998) and of In Continuous Expectation: Isabella d’Este’s Reign of Letters (2021). She has coedited numerous volumes, including Phaethon’s Children: The Este Court and its Culture in Early Modern Ferrara (2005), Writing Relations: American Scholars in Italian Archives (2008), and Itinera chartarum: 150 anni dell’Archivio di Stato di Mantova (2019). She co-directs IDEA: Isabella d'Este Archive, an online project for study of the Italian Renaissance.