A Sudden Frenzy

A Sudden Frenzy explores the intellectual and cultural history of improvisation and oral poetry in Renaissance Italy.

James K. Coleman is an assistant professor of Italian at the University of Pittsburgh.

"A Sudden Frenzy is a brilliant study of a form of early Renaissance performance that bridged high and low culture, recitation and instrumental music, sacred and profane, ancient and modern, wild imagination and meticulous crafting. Coleman shows us the ‘power of extemporaneity’ in a place and time often characterized for its classicism and strict conventions. By doing so, he opens exciting new doors onto humanist thought and practice."

Walter Stephens, Charles S. Singleton Professor of Italian Studies, Johns Hopkins University:

"James K. Coleman’s A Sudden Frenzy exposes the often surprising commonalities between classical scholarship and ‘popular’ culture in the Italian Renaissance. Coleman attenuates the long-perceived boundary between the written texts of humanist scholars such as Poggio Bracciolini and Angelo Poliziano and the numerous oral and improvised performances that flanked them. The role of ‘inspiration’ emerges forcefully in these chapters as far more than a commonplace or metaphor for composition."