Regulating relationships among strangers was a primary concern of the early modern world. Both the rediscovery of classical texts and new encounters between Europeans and Arabs, Asians, and Native Americans required a rethinking of the laws and customs of hospitality on both a local and a global scale. Theological conflicts and shifting national alignments in Europe itself also imperiled traditional conceptions of host and guest, forcing thinkers to envision their responsibilities to others in new ways. The thirteen articles in this collection offer case studies that examine the philosophies and dynamics of hospitality in early modern Italy, England, Central Europe, and the Ottoman Empire. In so doing, they explore practices, symbols, and philosophies of hospitality and obligation in the early modern world.

Edited by David B. Goldstein and Marco Piana.
392 pp., 15 ill.
$49.95. (Price includes applicable taxes.)
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ISBN 978-0-7727-2208-9 (softcover)
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David B. Goldstein serves as Associate Professor of English and coordinator of the Creative Writing Program at York University in Toronto. He is the author of Eating and Ethics in Shakespeare’s England (Cambridge, 2013) and two books of poetry, as well as the co-editor of Culinary Shakespeare: Staging Food and Drink in Early Modern England (Duquesne UP, 2016) and Shakespeare and Hospitality: Ethics, Politics, and Exchange (Routledge, 2016).

Marco Piana is Visiting Assistant Professor in Italian at Smith College and Fellow at the Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies at the University of Toronto. His field of research focuses on the literary representation of otherness, antiquity, and religious identity in Medieval and Early Modern Italy. Recent publications include special issues for the academic journals Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme, Confraternitas, and Quaderni d’Italianistica (forthcoming).