Palgrave Advances in Renaissance Historiography
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 9797804 |
|---|---|
| Authors | D Woolf (0000-0001-9537-1936, University of Alberta, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2006 |
| Volume | 121 |
| Issue | 493 |
| Pages | 1172-1173 |
| Publication date | 2006-09-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The English Historical Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0013-8266 • E-ISSN: 1477-4534 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/ehr/cel265 |
| OpenAlex | W2125956368 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 6 |
We are very nearly at the sesquicentennial of the publication of the book that virtually invented the Renaissance in its modern formulation, Jacob Burckhardt's Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy. Not surprisingly, the world of the condottieri and the humanists, and of the artists and the worldly prelates, looks rather different than it did in the day of the brilliant but idiosyncratic Swiss historian. A stock-taking of Renaissance historiography was taken by Wallace Ferguson in 1948 in a well-known book; other efforts have appeared since, including the suggestive (and here strangely under-used) Idea of the Renaissance, by William Kerrigan and Gordon Braden (1989). The present volume of essays is intended for ‘graduate and upper level students’ as an introduction to current debates, and specifically to the state of the field in a variety of areas related to Renaissance Studies. The contributors are in the main leading scholars in the field, so their judgments can generally be relied on by the trusting reader, or the lecturer boning up on an unfamiliar area (but see below for one caveat). The book is organised, following a brief editorial introduction, into three untitled parts, and it is not altogether clear what the rationale for the first two divisions is (though part 3, about half the volume, is devoted to topics such as ‘art’, ‘religion’, ‘gender’ and ‘science’). There are some very good essays, notably Woolfson's own interpretation of Burckhardt's vision, and Peter Burke's broad scan of Renaissance Europe in its global context. Catherine M. Soussloff achieves the nearly impossible task of summarising the current historiography of ‘art’ in a chapter of 15 pages. While the volume as a whole is peninsular to a considerable degree (though issuing helpful correctives such as David Abulafia's Neapolitan-oriented warning against taking the northern cities, much less Florence only, as the full measure of the Renaissance), there are ventures beyond. Most interesting among the departures, though it appears to fit rather oddly here, is Warren Boutcher's more tightly-argued chapter on ‘literature’, which focuses on England and specifically on the Campion-Daniel dispute over poesy and tradition at the end of Elizabeth I's reign. There is some duplication (for instance several reminders that the Renaissance of the late Paul Oskar Kristeller was not the Renaissance of Burckhardt), and necessarily some variation of views—the reader looking for a single clear definition of key terms such as ‘humanism’ will not leave happy, but that is both unavoidable and proper in an edited collection. If there is a major problem with the book it is owed less to its contents or organisation than the very conceptualisation of the series in which it lives. ‘Advances’ is surely a dubious framework for describing changing tides in humanistic fields. The essays herein do not depict ‘advances’ in the sense that Ernst Cassirer's and then Kristeller's generations ‘improved’ on Burckhardt's, and the current generation on Kristeller's and Hans Baron's. Fashions, in historiography as much as clothing, are cyclical and recurrent, especially where critical questions such as the originality of the Renaissance or the humanist debt to an outwardly reviled scholasticism are at issue. While we may know more (in the sense of having a much wider access to documents than previous scholars), or have a broader sense of background (no one would—or at least should—now teach the Renaissance as exclusively an artistic or literary movement without reference to social and religious contexts), imposing a progressivist scheme on the subject does not ‘advance’ our understanding. The editor and contributors are not to be blamed for what is an obvious marketing stratagem. The prudent instructor can usefully prescribe this book to students, but would be well advised to gloss the contents and especially the title in the manner of a cinquecento humanist rhetorician ensuring that his pupils do not pick up bad habits from reading Livy
Archaeology · Art · Art history · Civilization · Context (archaeology · Historiography · Humanism · Interpretation (philosophy · Italian Renaissance · Literature · Renaissance literature · State (computer science · The Renaissance · Theology · Classics · Computer Science · History · Philosophy · Renaissance and Early Modern Studies · Renaissance Literature and Culture
| Citations per year | 0.43 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2012 - 2014 (3) |
| Highly cited | No |