Presentism and the Renaissance and Early Modern Historian
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4162160 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Evelyn Welch (0000-0001-7320-2680, King's College London, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2017 |
| Volume | 234 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 245-253 |
| Publication date | 2017-02-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Past & Present (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0031-2746 • E-ISSN: 1477-464X |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/pastj/gtw058 |
| OpenAlex | W2583193157 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 5 |
Writing in 1941, Benedetto Croce argued, ‘All history is contemporary history’. In doing so, he created an aphorism that offers two dimensions to ‘presentism’.1 It can mean, for example, that we seek present-day concerns in the past, searching in the archives for the earlier versions of our own contemporary lives and interests. But ‘presentism’ can also mean attempts to remove texts from any particular period or place, asking them to represent universal rather than historically situated values. Like Robin Osborne’s classicism (described elsewhere in this set of articles), the framework of the Renaissance and early modern in Europe poses particular challenges in understanding this dual role. Both period labels drew on complex nineteenth-century nationalistic historiographies.2 The concept of the ‘rebirth’ of classical antiquity, a rinascita, or renaissance, was first adopted by Jules Michelet for the seventh volume of his nationalistic Histoire de France (1855), while in English the term ‘early modern’ was originally used by William Johnson in 1869 for his book Early Modern Europe. Whether looking backwards to a revival of classical art and architecture or forward to Protestant nationhood, the two historians connected the transition to nineteenth-century modernity to imagined beginnings in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.3 But it was not only nationhood that mattered. Like classicists, Renaissance and early modernist specialists saw themselves as having a unique role in creating a sense of a higher purpose, something that was particularly important during the fight against Fascism in the 1930s and 1940s.4 If the Renaissance was the juncture between a medieval way of life and modern values and mores, then its study was fraught with moral imperative.
Aesthetics · Ancient history · Archaeology · Art · Art history · Classicism · Early modern period · Epistemology · Fifteenth · Literature · Medievalism · Middle Ages · Modernity · Period (music) · Presentism · The Renaissance · Architecture · Classics · History · Philosophy · Reformation and Early Modern Christianity
| Unique citing works | 5 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0.63 |
| Citation span | 2018 - 2023 (6) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 5 |