Background
Mackenney was born on April 2, 1953, in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, United Kingdom.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001509PTG/?tag=2022091-20
1992
(For many generations, the importance of the Italian Renai...)
For many generations, the importance of the Italian Renaissance lay in its marking the beginning of modern times by means of a self-conscious break with the middle ages. This book seeks above all to convey the variety of cultural activity in Italy in the period between the fourteenth-century and the seventeenth: at different times within those three centuries, in different places in Italy, in association with different political ideologies. While this involves a measure of deconstruction, it also demands a synthesis that aims to communicate the richness of historical experience in the regions of Italy and the significance of that experience in the history of Europe as a whole. For many generations, the importance of the Italian Renaissance lay in its marking the beginning of modern times by means of a self-conscious break with the middle ages. This book seeks above all to convey the variety of cultural activity in Italy in the period between the fourteenth-century and the seventeenth: at different times within those three centuries, in different places in Italy, in association with different political ideologies. While this involves a measure of deconstruction, it also demands a synthesis that aims to communicate the richness of historical experience in the regions of Italy and the significance of that experience in the history of Europe as a whole.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0333629051/?tag=2022091-20
2004
(Few periods of a hundred years have held the imagination ...)
Few periods of a hundred years have held the imagination as much as the period 1500-1600. At least four great themes - Renaissance, Reformation, Counter-Reformation and Expansion - vie for dominance. The decisive cultural theme of the fifteenth century - classical revival in Italy - had spread and diversified, the social structures of the Ancien Regime were yet to solidify. This study examines the symptons of expansion - population growth, adventure overseas, new voyages of the imagination - and the areas of conflict - the world and the spirit, the public and private spheres, elite and popular cultures - and argues that spiritual quest and intellectual curiosity had the same cultural roots. Few periods of a hundred years have held the imagination as much as the period 1500-1600. At least four great themes - Renaissance, Reformation, Counter-Reformation and Expansion - vie for dominance. The decisive cultural theme of the fifteenth century - classical revival in Italy - had spread and diversified, the social structures of the Ancien Regime were yet to solidify. This study examines the symptons of expansion - population growth, adventure overseas, new voyages of the imagination - and the areas of conflict - the world and the spirit, the public and private spheres, elite and popular cultures - and argues that spiritual quest and intellectual curiosity had the same cultural roots.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0312067399/?tag=2022091-20
(European history between the Renaissance and the General ...)
European history between the Renaissance and the General Crisis of the 17th century is dominated by the spectacular triumphs of princes. The development of absolutism was a powerful threat to the liberties which towns had won in the Middle Ages and which were rooted in the aristotelian polis. This neglected story forms the subject of this study, which sets the victories of princely armies against a background of economic and social change, but points to the survival of European republicanism and its significance for the development of modern Europe and the modern West.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0391035983/?tag=2022091-20
(This book provides a new synthesis by offering a reinterp...)
This book provides a new synthesis by offering a reinterpretation of the accepted views on the nature and functions of the guild as it existed in medieval and early modern Venice and Europe.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0389207012/?tag=2022091-20
Mackenney was born on April 2, 1953, in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, United Kingdom.
Mackenney finished Queens College at Cambridge with bachelor's degree in 1975, he took his graduate study during 4 years from 1976. He also received his philosophy's degree from University of Edinburgh in 1982.
Mackenney spent twenty-five years at the University of Edinburgh, where he became a Full Professor and Head of History. His research centers on the Renaissance, spanning the period between the 13th century and the 17th. He has special interests in the History of Venice and in Shakespeare's plays and their relationship to the broader context of Renaissance mentalities.
Richard's approach is consciously interdisciplinary, and he is particularly interested in the overlap and interaction of history, literature, the visual arts, and music.
Mackenney began his writing career after his general historical interests grew more specialized, a result of research he was conducting on Venetian guilds, the origins of capitalism, and the development of the modern state.
Since his arrival in Binghamton, he has devoted his research and writing to a monograph on the guilds of Venice. As Polity of Mercy: The Spectrum of Representation in Venice, c.1250-c.1650, the fully revised text went out to readers in 2013. In his study, Mackenney asserts that the commercial prosperity of the city was a direct result of such guilds, which boasted a widespread membership throughout Venice and encouraged the acceptance of capitalist ideas.
Mackenney researches very rare, interesting and important theme: Examining a different section of Venetian society than most historians of the Italian Renaissance, he describes the city’s lower middle class of small manufacturers and storekeepers in Tradesmen and Traders: The World of the Guilds in Venice and Europe, c. 1250-c. 1650.
(This book provides a new synthesis by offering a reinterp...)
(For many generations, the importance of the Italian Renai...)
2004(European history between the Renaissance and the General ...)
(Few periods of a hundred years have held the imagination ...)
Quotations: "The study of Venice in Western history has raised the unsettling notion that history is a Western disease, an obsession with change in a culture which makes its ideals—Plato’s Republic, [Thomas] More’s Utopia, Renaissance Venice—places where change simply does not happen. The writers who have most influenced me are Jacob Burckhardt, Kenneth Clark, Hugh Trevor-Roper and John Roberts. All of them offer history which is general and which makes sense of the contemporary world in relation to the past. This is not self-consciously popular history, but it offers an alternative to what Burckhardt called ‘the devastation of the mind by newspapers and novels."
Mackenney is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.
