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

by Robert C. Davis

Book Overview

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...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0195084047
• ISBN13: 9780195084047
• Release Date: March 1994
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.1" x 9.3"