Hybrid Renaissance presents the Renaissance in Italy, elsewhere in Europe and in the world beyond Europe as an example of cultural hybridization. It is impossible to give a clear definition of either of the two key concepts used in this book, hybridization and Renaissance . Roughly speaking, hybridity refers to something new that emerges from the combination of diverse older elements. The term hybridization is preferable to hybridity because it refers to a process rather than to a state, and also because it encourages the writer and the readers alike to think in terms of more or less rather than of presence versus absence. The book begins with a discussion of the concept of cultural hybridity and a cluster of other concepts related to it. Then comes a geography of hybridity, focusing on three locales: courts, major cities (whether ports or capitals) and frontiers. There follow six chapters about the hybrid Renaissance in different fields: architecture, painting and sculpture, languages, literatures, music, philosophy and law and finally religion. The essay concludes with a brief account of attempts to resist hybridization or to purify cultures or domains from what was already hybridized