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The War of the Fists: Popular Culture and Public Violence in Late Renaissance Venice

The War of the Fists: Popular Culture and Public Violence in Late Renaissance Venice

Paperback

Medieval & Renaissance HistoryItalian History

ISBN10: 0195084047
ISBN13: 9780195084047
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: Mar 10 1994
Pages: 240
Weight: 0.91
Height: 0.58 Width: 6.10 Depth: 9.30
Language: English
The War of the Fists is a study of seventeenth-century worker culture in the city of Venice, focusing on the mock battles, or battagliole, which the town's two popular factions waged on public bridges. These little battles were partly festive battle, partly sport, and partly thinly veiled plebeian mayhem: they could involve as many as a thousand fighters on each side and attracted crowds of thirty thousand or more. Their importance in the city's plebeian life makes bridge battles an extremely valuable point of entry for exploring structures of Venetian popular culture, a task which Robert Davis attempts at four levels: the social geography of Venetian factionalism; the combat itself, and its relationship to social culture; the festive world which grew up around the encounters; and the response of Venice's patrician state to this largely uncontrollable worker celebration.

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Italian History