| Contents |
Philology, the Italian Renaissance, and authorship -- Lorenzo Valla, philology, emotion -- Losing your identity: Angelo Decembrio -- Trust and authenticity -- Pursuing a love of knowledge -- Shaping knowledge -- Forgetting philology: Ren̐ue Descartes -- Certainty. Skepticism -- Echoes. |
| Abstract |
"[This] ambitious new book focuses on the body of knowledge which we now call the humanities, charting its roots in the Italian Renaissance and exploring its development up to the Enlightenment. Beginning in the fifteenth century, the author shows how thinkers like Lorenzo Valla and Angelo Poliziano developed innovative ways to read texts closely, paying attention to historical context, developing methods to determine a text's authenticity, and taking the humanities seriously as a means of bettering human life. Alongside such novel reading practices, technology - the invention of printing with moveable type - fundamentally changed perceptions of truth. Celenza also reveals how luminaries like Descartes, Diderot, and D'Alembert - as well as many lesser-known scholars - challenged traditional ways of thinking. Celenza's authoritative narrative demonstrates above all how the work of the early modern humanist philosophers had a profound impact on the general quest for human wisdom. His magisterial volume will be essential reading for all those who value the humanities and their fascinating history"-- Jacket. |
| Bibliography note | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| Biographical note | "Christopher Celenza is the James B. Knapp Dean of the Zanvyl Krieger School of Arts and Sciences at Johns Hopkins University, where he is also Professor of History and Classics. Former Director of the American Academy in Rome, he is the author of the prize-winning The Lost Italian Renaissance, Machiavelli: A Portrait, and The Intellectual World of the Italian Renaissance. His work has been featured in Salon, The Huffington Post, and on radio and television. Celenza has served as Dean of Georgetown College at Georgetown University and has held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Harvard University Center for the Study of the Italian Renaissance (Villa I Tatti), the American Academy in Rome, and the Fulbright Foundation"-- Provided by publisher. |
| Issued in other form | Online version: Celenza, Christopher S., 1967- The Italian Renaissance and the origins of the modern humanities First edition. New York : Cambridge University Press, 2021. 9781108980623 |
| LCCN | 2021010804 |
| ISBN | 9781108833400 |
| ISBN | 1108833403 hardback |
| ISBN | (ebook) |
