Recreation in the Renaissance

In Renaissance Europe, when 'leisure classes' used social gathering to define civility and the commercialization of leisure was beginning, the human need for recreation became a cultural topos. The book explores the vocabulary of play and games; the spectrum of leisure activities, often gender-specific or appropriate to particular social groups; the medical discourse on the preservation of health, where amusements were assessed as physical exercise; the moral approach to play; legal treatises on gambling; and the visual representation of leisure.

'An original, learned, lucid and accessible study that should be essential reading for students of the history of sport, leisure and the Renaissance.' - Professor Peter Burke, University of Cambridge 'In this elegant and wide-ranging book, Alessandro Arcangeli sets medical exercise among other types of recreation discussed by European writers during the long Renaissance.' - Vivian Nutton, Medical History

ALESSANDRO ARCANGELI (PhD Pisa) Lecturer in Early Modern History at the University of Verona, has studied at the Warburg Institute (1989-90) and was a Fellow of Villa I Tatti (1998-99). His book on the cultural history of dance, Davide o Salomè, was awarded a prize (Finale Ligure Storia, 2001).