The Renaissance Reader allows the men and women of that turbulent time of change to speak in their own voices - sane and insane, brilliant and mundane, inspired and possessed, oblivious and decisive. Organized chronologically and covering the fourteenth through seventeenth centuries, the book provides readers with the literary and artistic; social, religious and political; and scientific and philosophic texts that shaped Renaissance thinking from the death of Dante in 1321 to the death of Cervantes and Shakespeare in 1616. Besides selections from such familiar texts as Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte Darthur, Baldassare Castiglione's The Book of the Courtier and Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote, the book also contains the work of many less familiar writers, including such prominent Renaissance women as Christine de Pizan, Isabella d'Este and Catherine Zell. With the inclusion of the works of such brilliant artists as Giotto, da Vinci, Durer, Michelangelo, Raphael, Brueghel and others, The Renaissance Reader brings the age to life with all its vibrance and excitement.