Giovanni and Lusanna : Love and Marriage in Renaissance Florence [Paperback]

Gene Brucker (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0520063287 | ISBN-13: 978-0520063280 | Publication Date: January 11, 1988

This compelling account of a wronged woman in Renaissance Florence, first published in 1986, is a fascinating view of Florentine society and its attitudes on love, marriage, class, and gender. Lusanna was a beautiful woman from a middle-class background who, in 1455, brought suit against Giovanni, her aristocratic lover, when she learned he had contracted to marry a woman of his own class. Blending scholarship with insightful narrative, the book portrays an extraordinary woman who challenged the unwritten codes and barriers of the social hierarchy and dared to seek a measure of personal independence in a male-dominated world.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

In 1455, Lusanna, the beautiful widow of an artisan, brought an ultimately un successful suit against Giovanni, an aristocrat, seeking legal recognition of their clandestine marriage. The author skillfully reconstructs the story of these former lovers. Their dispute, and affair, is amply documented in the sometimes seamy witness testimony contained in Florentine court records. While this case is a highly atypical example of one woman's determined challenge to the social norm, the resultant court battle sheds additional light on Renaissance Florence's class system as well as con temporary legal, moral, and sexual con ventions. This work is a fine example of microhistory, which emphasizes the story of specific events or ordinary peo ple hitherto ignored. Recommended particularly for academic history and women's studies collections. William F. Young, SUNY at Albany Lib.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

At its core, this splendid study is about stubborn love, the forms of law, and the impossibility of each to accommodate the ultimate claims of the other. -- New York Times Book Review

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 100 pages
• Publisher: University of California Press (January 11, 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0520063287
• ISBN-13: 978-0520063280
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 4.9 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #863,520 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A rare look into Renaissance Florence, December 17, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Giovanni and Lusanna : Love and Marriage in Renaissance Florence (Paperback)

For anyone who enjoys history, and especially Italian Renaissance history, this is a gem! This book is an examination of marriage as a legal institution and the prescribed roles of both men and women in it. By examining two actual persons involved in a legal case about the validity of their marriage, Lusanna and Giovanni, Brucker allows the reader a rare glimpse into a more personal type of history- a microhistory, that tries to show the greater mores and norms of Renaissance Florence through the interpretation of a legal case. Although not an easy read, and why should it be, this is an excellent introduction to anyone interested in more detailed historical analysis of law and social institutions in the Renissance.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Love and . . . Marriage?, July 22, 2009

By 

mojosmom (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Giovanni and Lusanna: Love and Marriage in Renaissance Florence, With a New Preface (Paperback)

In 1455, in Florence, Lusanna di Benedetto, a widow of the artisanal class, brought suit against the noble, Giovanni della Casa, attempting to prove that he had secretly married her, and that, therefore, his publicly celebrated marriage to another was bigamous.

Professor Brucker has taken the simple records of this lawsuit and has used them as the framework for a short, but information-packed, account of Florentine society in the 14th-century. This story of a woman who challenged class and hierarchy in order to protect her reputation and prove the legitimacy of her marriage has a great deal to teach us about the legal process of the time, the interplay and tension between civil and church authority, the relationship between social classes, gender norms, and, of course, marriage laws and customs. This book shows Brucker as not only a scholar, but a story-teller, one who can turn the dry papers of the law courts into a fascinating human narrative. In particular, he brings Lusanna and Giovanni to life. We can almost feel what they felt, and understand how their upbringing, social positions and expectations brought them, first, together, and then into conflict. I was, frankly, surprised to find how much I had learned from a book of slightly over 100 pages!

As one who believes that one of the great disadvantages of closed stacks and internet search engines is the minimized opportunity for digression and serendipitous finds, I was delighted to read that this book was the result of Professor Brucker's fascination with a story that he came across while doing research into another matter at the Florentine State Archives. Indeed, he temporarily abandoned that research to concentrate on this story. A man after my own heart!

4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting, November 8, 2011

By 

Alissa Johnston - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Giovanni and Lusanna: Love and Marriage in Renaissance Florence, With a New Preface (Paperback)

This book is very interesting. It definitely was not what I expected it to be but I found the story to be so entrancing that I couldn't put the book down until I was completely done reading it!