Reviewed by:

• Luxury and the Ethics of Greed in Early Modern Italy ed. by Catherine Kovesi
• Sarah Bendall

The timeline for the birth of modern consumption practices in Western Europe is constantly in scholarly flux. Some say that the modern consumer society began in the nineteenth century in places like America, others in England or France during the late eighteenth century at the dawn of the industrial revolution. Others still will argue for the seventeenth century with the invention of joint-stock companies and the proliferation of cheap goods that trade from the East and West Indies offered European consumers by the end of that century. [End Page 221]

In the introduction to this edited collection of twelve essays, derived from a conference held in 2014, Catherine Kovesi pinpoints the birth of modern consumption practices to Italy during the fifteenth century, when debates about luxury and greed were reframed for the first time since antiquity to critique growing trends of aspirational consumption among newly moneyed communities. This is a bold claim to make, but one that this edited collection does so quite convincingly as it moves from discussions of the meanings of luxury and greed in early modern Italy, to essays dealing with the consumption, dissemination, and imitation of luxury consumer goods throughout the Peninsula.

Section 1 identifies the meanings of the term ‘luxury’, placing it squarely in the context of what it meant in the changing moneyed and consumer landscape of Florence. Kovesi argues that Italy was the first country in Europe to develop a vernacular term—lusso—in the fifteenth century, to describe consumptive practices by people with new money and aspirations. She argues that tracing the term luxury through the genealogy of the Latin luxus has led historians astray, as lusso is related to luxus/luxuria but was purposely created in the vernacular to critique new cultures of consumption rather than lust/sensuality. Essays by Kovesi, Lino Pertile and Peter Howard in this section all challenge the assumption that luxury and greed were exclusively associated with the elites, as they discuss the difference between magnificence and luxury, the former being the inherited right to extravagance (framed as a virtue) of the elites, the latter being attributed to the newly moneyed.

Section 2 and Section 3 carry on discussion by examining how goods such as food, clothing, household objects, and books were consumed and disseminated by craftspeople, street pedlars, vendors, and diplomats throughout the Italian Peninsula and beyond. Essays by Maria Giuseppina Muzzarelli and Rosa Salzburg explore the clothing and small luxury items consumed by non-elites who often skirted the boundaries of sumptuary legislation, while those by Timothy Wilson and Sean Roberts examine luxury gift-giving between women and between diplomats. Jola Pellumbi discusses magnificence in her essay on Venetian senatorial dress, a burdensome expense that could financially cripple those patricians forced to wear them. As these robes reflected the dignity of the state, they were considered a magnificence as opposed to a luxury. However, as many nobles simply could not afford magnificence, the significant question posed is: when does magnificence become luxury?

Essays by Laura Giannetti and Rebecca Earle also discuss food and luxury. Earle challenges north-western European ideas about chocolate that associated the food with decadent luxury, pleasure, and idleness. She argues that Spanish discourses stressed chocolate’s ordinariness due to its association with the American colonies where it was widely consumed. Earle’s article, while fascinating, is primarily focused on Spain. Besides a short description of chocolate consumption in the Spanish territories of Sicily and Naples, very little attention is paid to chocolate in a wider Italian context. Was chocolate considered ordinary [End Page 222] in the north of Italy like it was in Naples, or was it a luxury? This question is not answered; probably because it is not part of Earle’s overall research focus. As a result, it sets this otherwise excellent essay out of joint with the rest of the collection.

Two of the most...

审核人：

• 《现代意大利早期》中的“奢侈品与贪婪伦理”。凯瑟琳·科维西（Catherine Kovesi）
• 莎拉·本德尔（Sarah Bendall）

西欧现代消费实践产生的时间表一直在不断变化。有人说，现代消费者社会始于19世纪，始于美国等地，其他地方则始于18世纪晚期工业革命之初的英国或法国。在股份制公司的发明和廉价商品的泛滥中，其他人仍然会为17世纪辩护。该世纪末，从东方和西方印度贸易来的廉价商品为欧洲消费者提供了服务。[结束页221]

凯瑟琳·科维西（Catherine Kovesi）在2014年的一次会议上发表的这本经编辑的十二篇论文集的简介中，凯瑟琳·科维西（Catherine Kovesi）指出了十五世纪意大利现代消费习惯的诞生，当时关于奢侈和贪婪的辩论自上古以来首次重新组织。对新近有钱的社区中的志向消费的增长趋势提出了批评。这是一个大胆的主张，但是这个编辑过的收藏集确实令人信服，因为它从对早期现代意大利的奢侈和贪婪的含义的讨论转移到了有关奢侈品的消费，传播和模仿的论文。整个半岛。

第1节确定了“奢侈”一词的含义，将其与佛罗伦萨不断变化的货币和消费者格局所指的含义放在一起。Kovesi认为，意大利是欧洲第一个国家制定了白话条款而─ LUSSO -在十五世纪，人们用新的资金和愿望来描述消费的做法。她认为，通过跟踪拉丁的家谱术语豪华豪华型导致历史学家误入歧途，因为LUSSO是关系到豪华型/ luxuria但它是故意在白话语中创建的，目的是批评新的消费文化，而不是欲望/淫荡。在本节中，科维西，利诺·珀蒂尔（Lino Pertile）和彼得·霍华德（Peter Howard）的论文都质疑奢侈和贪婪只与精英阶层相关的假设，因为他们讨论了奢侈和奢侈之间的区别，前者是奢侈的继承权（以美德为框架） ）的精英阶层，后者则归功于新近获得的收入。

第2节和第3节通过讨论整个意大利半岛及其他地区的手工业者，街头小贩，小贩和外交官如何消费和传播诸如食物，衣服，家用物品和书籍之类的商品来进行讨论。玛丽亚·朱塞佩娜·穆扎雷利（Maria Giuseppina Muzzarelli）和罗莎·萨尔茨堡（Rosa Salzburg）的散文探讨了非精英人士所穿的服装和小型奢侈品，这些人常常绕过支票立法的界限，而蒂莫西·威尔逊（Timothy Wilson）和肖恩·罗伯茨（Sean Roberts）的散文则考察妇女之间以及外交官之间的送礼。约拉·佩伦比（Jola Pellumbi）在其威尼斯参议员着装中的文章中论述了这一宏伟之处，这是一笔沉重的负担，可能在经济上削弱那些被迫穿上这些贵族的贵族。由于这些长袍反映了国家的尊严，因此被认为是华丽而不是奢华。然而，

劳拉·吉安内蒂（Laura Giannetti）和丽贝卡·厄尔（Rebecca Earle）的散文也讨论了美食和奢侈品。厄尔（Earle）挑战了欧洲西北部关于巧克力的观念，使食物与decade废的奢华，愉悦和闲适感联系在一起。她认为，西班牙的话语强调巧克力的平凡性，因为巧克力与被广泛消费的美国殖民地有关联。厄尔的文章虽然引人入胜，但主要关注西班牙。除了对西西里岛和那不勒斯西班牙地区的巧克力消费进行简短描述之外，在更广泛的意大利背景下，对巧克力的关注也很少。巧克力被认为是普通的吗？[结束页222]在意大利北部，就像那不勒斯一样，还是奢侈品？这个问题没有被回答; 可能是因为它不是Earle整体研究重点的一部分。结果，它使这篇本来很好的论文与其余的论文集脱颖而出。

最多的两个...