Early Modern Hospitality

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.

"This fascinating collection of articles and its suggestive juxtapositions extend the question of hospitality in early modern Europe, showing its implications across institutions, cultures, and social practices."
- Sean Lawrence, University of British Columbia

"Tracking hospitality in civic, religious, literary, and international places and spaces, this stunning new collection of essays crosses Europe in search of hospitality’s accommodations, achievements, and catastrophes."
- Julia Reinhard Lupton, University of California, Irvine

"In dialogue with contemporary theory and grounded on solid archival research, the essays in this volume make a compelling case for hospitality’s place in early modern thought and society from London to Rome and from Venice to the eastern frontiers of its commercial routes."
- Matteo Soranzo, McGill University

DAVID B. GOLDSTEIN serves as Associate Professor of English and coordinator of the Creative Writing Program at York University in Toronto.

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.