ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book seeks to challenge and to interpret both the glamorization of Naples as excessive, dangerous and exotic, and its related scholarly neglect. It aims to bridge that gulf by offering to non-Neapolitan specialists a cross-section of some of the most significant new approaches to early modern Naples across a range of disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives, including its political history, its cultural history, its art, architecture, music and religious devotion. The book addresses the biases operating in early modern Italian scholarship fairly and squarely. The centre of Spanish colonial power within Europe during the vicerealty, with a population second only to Paris, Naples experienced lacerating cultural change in this period, which, in turn, profoundly altered it. Naples offers vital points of comparison with non-European locations that were subject to European colonialism.
