The Waning Of The Renaissance 1550 1640

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The Waning of the Renaissance, 1550-1640

Author : William James Bouwsma
Publisher : Yale University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780300097177
Total Pages : 328 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (971 download)

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Book Synopsis The Waning of the Renaissance, 1550-1640 by : William James Bouwsma

Download or read book The Waning of the Renaissance, 1550-1640 written by William James Bouwsma and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2002-01-01 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Historians have conventionally viewed intellectual and artistic achievement as a seamless progression in a single direction, with the Renaissance, as identified by Jacob Burckhardt, as the root and foundation of modern culture. But in this brilliant new analysis William Bouwsma rethinks the accepted view, arguing that while the Renaissance had a beginning and, unquestionably, a climax, it also had an ending. Examining the careers of some of the greatest figures of the age--Montaigne, Galileo, Jonson, Descartes, Hooker, Shakespeare, and Cervantes among many others--Bouwsma perceives in their work a growing sense of doubt and anxiety about the modern world. He considers first those features of modern European culture generally associated with the traditional Renaissance, features which reached their climax in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. But even as the movements of the Renaissance gathered strength, simultaneous impulses operated in a contrary direction. Bouwsma identifies a growing concern with personal identity, shifts in the interests of major thinkers, a decline in confidence about the future, and a heightening of anxiety. Exploring the fluctuating and sometimes contradictory atmosphere in which Renaissance artists and thinkers operated, Bouwsma shows how the very liberation from old boundaries and modes of expression that characterized the Renaissance became itself increasingly stifling and destructive. By drawing attention to the waning of the Renaissance culture of freedom and creativity, Bouwsma offers a wholly new and intriguing interpretation of the place of the European Renaissance in modern culture.

Skepticism and Belief in Early Modern England

Author : Melissa M. Caldwell
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317054547
Total Pages : 444 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (17 download)

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Book Synopsis Skepticism and Belief in Early Modern England by : Melissa M. Caldwell

Download or read book Skepticism and Belief in Early Modern England written by Melissa M. Caldwell and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-09-13 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The central thesis of this book is that skepticism was instrumental to the defense of orthodox religion and the development of the identity of the Church of England. Examining the presence of skepticism in non-fiction prose literature at four transitional moments in English Protestant history during which orthodoxy was challenged and revised, Melissa Caldwell argues that a skeptical mode of thinking is embedded in the literary and rhetorical choices made by English writers who straddle the project of reform and the maintenance of orthodoxy after the Reformation in England. Far from being a radical belief simply indicative of an emerging secularism, she demonstrates the varied and complex appropriations of skeptical thought in early modern England. By examining a selection of various kinds of literature-including religious polemic, dialogue, pamphlets, sermons, and treatises-produced at key moments in early modern England’s religious history, Caldwell shows how the writers under consideration capitalized on the unscripted moral space that emerged in the wake of the Reformation. The result was a new kind of discourse--and a new form of orthodoxy--that sought both to exploit and to contain the skepticism unearthed by the Reformation.

The Culture of the Horse

Author : K. Raber
Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 1137097256
Total Pages : 379 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (37 download)

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Book Synopsis The Culture of the Horse by : K. Raber

Download or read book The Culture of the Horse written by K. Raber and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-04-30 with total page 379 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume fills an important gap in the analysis of early modern history and culture by reintroducing scholars to the significance of the horse. A more complete understanding of the role of horses and horsemanship is absolutely crucial to our understanding of the early modern world. Each essay in the collection provides a snapshot of how horse culture and the broader culture - that tapestry of images, objects, structures, sounds, gestures, texts, and ideas - articulate. Without knowledge of how the horse figured in all these aspects, no version of political, material, or intellectual culture in the period can be entirely accurate.

Gender, Kabbalah, and the Reformation

Author : Yvonne Petry
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 9004138013
Total Pages : 207 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (41 download)

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Book Synopsis Gender, Kabbalah, and the Reformation by : Yvonne Petry

Download or read book Gender, Kabbalah, and the Reformation written by Yvonne Petry and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2004-01-01 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study examines the thought of Guillaume Postel (1510-1581), a French religious thinker who relied on Jewish Kabbalah and its mystical understanding of gender to argue that a female messiah had arrived who would heal the political and religious conflicts of sixteenth-century Europe.

The Oxford History of Classical Reception in English Literature

Author : Patrick Cheney
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0191077798
Total Pages : 752 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (91 download)

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Book Synopsis The Oxford History of Classical Reception in English Literature by : Patrick Cheney

Download or read book The Oxford History of Classical Reception in English Literature written by Patrick Cheney and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2015-10-29 with total page 752 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oxford History of Classical Reception (OHCREL) is designed to offer a comprehensive investigation of the numerous and diverse ways in which literary texts of the classical world have stimulated responses and refashioning by English writers. Covering the full range of English literature from the early Middle Ages to the present day, OHCREL both synthesizes existing scholarship and presents cutting-edge new research, employing an international team of expert contributors for each of the five volumes. OHCREL endeavours to interrogate, rather than inertly reiterate, conventional assumptions about literary 'periods', the processes of canon-formation, and the relations between literary and non-literary discourse. It conceives of 'reception' as a complex process of dialogic exchange and, rather than offering large cultural generalizations, it engages in close critical analysis of literary texts. It explores in detail the ways in which English writers' engagement with classical literature casts as much light on the classical originals as it does on the English writers' own cultural context. This second volume covers the years 1558-1660, and explores the reception of the ancient genres and authors in English Renaissance literature, engaging with the major, and many of the minor, writers of the period, including Shakespeare, Marlowe, Spenser, and Jonson. Separate chapters examine the Renaissance institutions and contexts which shape the reception of antiquity, and an annotated bibliography provides substantial material for further reading.

Seeing with Both Eyes

Author : Leonard Levin
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 9047432746
Total Pages : 472 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (474 download)

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Book Synopsis Seeing with Both Eyes by : Leonard Levin

Download or read book Seeing with Both Eyes written by Leonard Levin and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2008-06-25 with total page 472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is an integrated study of the revival of philosophical studies in 16th-century central-European Jewry focusing on seven major thinkers and especially on the intellectual development of Ephraim Luntshitz (1550-1619). Preoccupation with philosophy is traced through Moses Isserles, Solomon Luria, Mordecai Jaffe, Abraham Horowitz, Eliezer Ashkenazi, Maharal of Prague, and Ephraim Luntshitz. Analysis of these thinkers’ intellectual affiliations is based on close analysis of their primary texts, of which a generous selection is provided in translation for the first time. This work advances the scholarly study of 16th-century Polish-Jewish culture, the Polish Jewish Renaissance, the philosophical interests of Ashkenazic Jewry, Jewish responses to Renaissance humanism and the Reformation, and the early-modern background for the 18th-century Jewish Enlightenment.

The Oxford History of Classical Reception in English Literature

Author : David Hopkins
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0199547556
Total Pages : 803 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (995 download)

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Book Synopsis The Oxford History of Classical Reception in English Literature by : David Hopkins

Download or read book The Oxford History of Classical Reception in English Literature written by David Hopkins and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 803 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oxford History of Classical Reception (OHCREL) is designed to offer a comprehensive investigation of the numerous and diverse ways in which literary texts of the classical world have stimulated responses and refashioning by English writers. Covering the full range of English literature from the early Middle Ages to the present day, OHCREL both synthesizes existing scholarship and presents cutting-edge new research, employing an international team of expert contributors for each of the five volumes. OHCREL endeavours to interrogate, rather than inertly reiterate, conventional assumptions about literary 'periods', the processes of canon-formation, and the relations between literary and non-literary discourse. It conceives of 'reception' as a complex process of dialogic exchange and, rather than offering large cultural generalizations, it engages in close critical analysis of literary texts. It explores in detail the ways in which English writers' engagement with classical literature casts as much light on the classical originals as it does on the English writers' own cultural context. This second volume, and third to appear in the series, covers the years 1558-1660, and explores the reception of the ancient genres and authors in English Renaissance literature, engaging with the major, and many of the minor, writers of the period, including Shakespeare, Marlowe, Spenser, and Jonson. Separate chapters examine the Renaissance institutions and contexts which shape the reception of antiquity, and an annotated bibliography provides substantial material for further reading.

Re-membering Masculinity in Early Modern Florence

Author : Allison Levy
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1351904485
Total Pages : 360 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (519 download)

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Book Synopsis Re-membering Masculinity in Early Modern Florence by : Allison Levy

Download or read book Re-membering Masculinity in Early Modern Florence written by Allison Levy and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-03-02 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Pliny to Petrarch to Pope-Hennessy and beyond, many have understood the obvious connection between portraiture and commemorative practice. This book expands and nuances our understanding of Renaissance portraiture; the author shows it to be complexly generated within a discourse of male anxiety and pre-mortuary mourning. She argues that portraiture could defer memory loss or, at the very least, pictorially console the subject against his own potentially unmourned death. This book recognizes a socio-cultural anxiety - the fear not merely of death but also of being forgotten - and identifies a set of pictorial, literary and theoretical strategies consequently formulated to ensure memory. To explore this phenomenon, this interdisciplinary but fundamentally art historical project merges early modern visual culture and critical theories of the body. The author examines an extensive selection of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century male and female portraits, primarily associated with the Medici family, circle and court, in and against both historical writings and contemporary discourses, including literary and cultural theory, psychoanalysis, feminism and gender studies, and critical theories of race and disability. Re-membering Masculinity generates new ideas about both male and female portraiture in early modern Florence, raises even more questions about the experiences and representations of widowhood and mourning, and re-configures our understanding of masculinity - from the early modern male body to 'Renaissance Man' to postmodern manhood.

Disknowledge

Author : Katherine Eggert
Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN 13 : 0812291883
Total Pages : 364 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (122 download)

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Book Synopsis Disknowledge by : Katherine Eggert

Download or read book Disknowledge written by Katherine Eggert and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2015-10-02 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Disknowledge": knowing something isn't true, but believing it anyway. In Disknowledge: Literature, Alchemy, and the End of Humanism in Renaissance England, Katherine Eggert explores the crumbling state of learning in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Even as the shortcomings of Renaissance humanism became plain to see, many intellectuals of the age had little choice but to treat their familiar knowledge systems as though they still held. Humanism thus came to share the status of alchemy: a way of thinking simultaneously productive and suspect, reasonable and wrongheaded. Eggert argues that English writers used alchemy to signal how to avoid or camouflage pressing but discomfiting topics in an age of rapid intellectual change. Disknowledge describes how John Donne, George Herbert, Henry Vaughan, John Dee, Christopher Marlowe, William Harvey, Helkiah Crooke, Edmund Spenser, and William Shakespeare used alchemical imagery, rhetoric, and habits of thought to shunt aside three difficult questions: how theories of matter shared their physics with Roman Catholic transubstantiation; how Christian Hermeticism depended on Jewish Kabbalah; and how new anatomical learning acknowledged women's role in human reproduction. Disknowledge further shows how Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and Margaret Cavendish used the language of alchemy to castigate humanism for its blind spots and to invent a new, posthumanist mode of knowledge: writing fiction. Covering a wide range of authors and topics, Disknowledge is the first book to analyze how English Renaissance literature employed alchemy to probe the nature and limits of learning. The concept of disknowledge—willfully adhering to something we know is wrong—resonates across literary and cultural studies as an urgent issue of our own era.

A Companion to Richard Hooker

Author : Torrance Kirby
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 9047432959
Total Pages : 710 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (474 download)

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Book Synopsis A Companion to Richard Hooker by : Torrance Kirby

Download or read book A Companion to Richard Hooker written by Torrance Kirby and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2008-02-28 with total page 710 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Richard Hooker was a learned philosophical theologian and engaged polemicist of the later sixteenth century who explained and defended the Elizabethan religious and political settlement, and shaped definitively the self-understanding of the English ecclesiastical establishment for centuries to come. This Companion to Richard Hooker brings together a representative body of contributors with a view to offering a summary of the current state of scholarly debate and a synthesis of emerging trends in criticism. Contributions to this volume reflect the major current trends of scholarly opinion on Hooker’s place within the mainstream of Protestant reform. This Companion aims to provide a comprehensive and systematic introduction to Richard Hooker’s life, works, thought, reputation, and influence. Contributors are: Rudolph P. Almasy, Daniel Eppley, Lee W. Gibbs, Egil Grislis, William Harrison, W. Speed Hill, Ranall Ingalls, Dean Kernan, Torrance Kirby, Diarmaid MacCulloch, A. S. McGrade, W. David Neelands, W. Brown Patterson, Debora K. Shuger, Corneliu C. Simuţ, John K. Stafford, Paul Stanwood, James F. Turrell, and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams.

Passion for History

Author : Natalie Zemon Davis
Publisher : Penn State Press
ISBN 13 : 0271091290
Total Pages : 233 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (71 download)

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Book Synopsis Passion for History by : Natalie Zemon Davis

Download or read book Passion for History written by Natalie Zemon Davis and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2010-01-25 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The pathbreaking work of renowned historian Natalie Zemon Davis has added profoundly to our understanding of early modern society and culture. She rescues men and women from oblivion using her unique combination of rich imagination, keen intelligence, and archival sleuthing to uncover the past. Davis brings to life a dazzling cast of extraordinary people, revealing their thoughts, emotions, and choices in the world in which they lived. Thanks to Davis we can meet the impostor Arnaud du Tilh in her classic, The Return of Martin Guerre, follow three remarkable lives in Women on the Margins, and journey alongside a traveler and scholar in Trickster Travels as he moves between the Muslim and Christian worlds. In these conversations with Denis Crouzet, professor of history at the Sorbonne and well-known specialist on the French Wars of Religion, Natalie Zemon Davis examines the practices of history and controversies in historical method. Their discussion reveals how Davis has always pursued the thrill and joy of discovery through historical research. Her quest is influenced by growing up Jewish in the Midwest as a descendant of emigrants from Eastern Europe. She recounts how her own life as a citizen, a woman, and a scholar compels her to ceaselessly examine and transcend received opinions and certitudes. Davis reminds the reader of the broad possibilities to be found by studying the lives of those who came before us, and teaches us how to give voice to what was once silent.

Worldly Shakespeare

Author : Richard Wilson
Publisher : Edinburgh University Press
ISBN 13 : 1474411355
Total Pages : 320 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (744 download)

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Book Synopsis Worldly Shakespeare by : Richard Wilson

Download or read book Worldly Shakespeare written by Richard Wilson and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2016-02-02 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Worldly Shakespeare Richard Wilson proposes that the universalism proclaimed in the name of Shakespeare's playhouse was tempered by his own worldliness, the performative idea that runs through his plays, that if 'All the world's a stage', then 'all the men and women in it' are 'merely players'. Situating this playacting in the context of current concerns about the difference between globalization and mondialisation, the book considers how this drama offers itself as a model for a planet governed not according to universal toleration, but the right to offend: 'But with good will'. For when he asks us to think we 'have but slumbered' throughout his offensive plays, Wilson suggests, Shakespeare is presenting a drama without catharsis, which anticipates post-structuralist thinkers like Jacques Rancire and Slavoj A iA ek, who insist the essence of democracy is dissent, and 'the presence of two worlds in one'. Living out his scenario of the guest who destroys the host, by welcoming the religious terrorist, paranoid queen, veiled woman, papist diehard, or puritan fundamentalist into his play-world, Worldly Shakespeare concludes, the dramatist instead provides a pretext for our globalized communities in a time of Facebook and fatwa, as we also come to depend on the right to offend 'with our good will'.

The History of Philosophy

Author : Donald Phillip Verene
Publisher : Northwestern University Press
ISBN 13 : 0810151979
Total Pages : 204 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (11 download)

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Book Synopsis The History of Philosophy by : Donald Phillip Verene

Download or read book The History of Philosophy written by Donald Phillip Verene and published by Northwestern University Press. This book was released on 2008-06-20 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the aim of guiding readers along, in Hegel’s words, “the long process of education towards genuine philosophy,” this introduction emphasizes the importance of striking up a conversation with the past. Only by looking to past masters and their works, it holds, can old memories and prior thought be brought fully to bear on the present. This living past invigorates contemporary practice, enriching today’s study and discoveries. In this book, groundbreaking philosopher and author Donald Verene addresses two themes: why should one study the historically “great” texts and, if such a study is necessary, how can one undertake it? Acting out against the rejection of the idea that there is a philosophical canon, he centers his argument on the “tetralogy” of Plato, Aristotle, Kant, and Hegel. From his opening look at the rhetorical tradition, he brings those core ideals forward to classical Roman and medieval philosophers and then on into Renaissance and modern philosophy, including contemporary thinkers such as Derrida and Foucault. This vital chronological outline is supplemented by Verene’s contextualizing commentary. In ensuing sections, he offers guidance on reading philosophical works with “intellectual empathy,” suggests 100 essential works to establish a canon, illustrates the role of philosophers in history and society, and examines the nature of history itself. Ultimately, Verene concludes that history may be essential to philosophy, but philosophy is more than just its history.

Heresy, Magic and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

Author : Gary K Waite
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 0230629121
Total Pages : 284 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (36 download)

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Book Synopsis Heresy, Magic and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe by : Gary K Waite

Download or read book Heresy, Magic and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe written by Gary K Waite and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-10-10 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the fifteenth century many authorities did not believe Inquisitors' stories of a supposed Satanic witch sect. However, the religious conflict of the sixteenth-century Reformation - especially popular movements of reform and revolt - helped to create an atmosphere in which diabolical conspiracies (which swept up religious dissidents, Jews and magicians into their nets) were believed to pose a very real threat. Fear of the Devil and his followers inspired horrific incidents of judicially-approved terror in early modern Europe, leading after 1560 to the infamous witch hunts. Bringing together the fields of Reformation and witchcraft studies, this fascinating book reveals how the early modern period's religious conflicts led to widespread confusion and uncertainty. Gary K. Waite examines in-depth how church leaders dispelled rising religious doubt by persecuting heretics, and how alleged infernal plots, and witches who confessed to making a pact with the Devil, helped the authorities to reaffirm orthodoxy. Waite argues that it was only when the authorities came to terms with pluralism that there was a corresponding decline in witch panics.

From Oikonomia to Political Economy

Author : Germano Maifreda
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317131983
Total Pages : 313 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (171 download)

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Book Synopsis From Oikonomia to Political Economy by : Germano Maifreda

Download or read book From Oikonomia to Political Economy written by Germano Maifreda and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-22 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Renaissance Europe witnessed a surge of interest in new scientific ideas and theories. Whilst the study of this 'Scientific Revolution' has dramatically shifted our appreciation of many facets of the early-modern world, remarkably little attention has been paid to its influence upon one key area; that of economics. Through an interrogation of the relationship between economic and scientific developments in early-modern Western Europe, this book demonstrates how a new economic epistemology appeared that was to have profound consequences both at the time, and for subsequent generations. Dr Maifreda argues that the new attention shown by astronomers, physicians, aristocrats, men of letters, travellers and merchants for the functioning of economic life and markets, laid the ground for a radically new discourse that envisioned 'economics' as an independent field of scientific knowledge. By researching the historical context surrounding this new field of knowledge, he identifies three key factors that contributed to the cultural construction of economics. Firstly, Italian Humanism and Renaissance, which promoted new subjects, methods and quantitative analysis. Secondly, European overseas expansion, which revealed the existence of economic cultures previously unknown to Europeans. Thirdly factor identified is the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century crisis of traditional epistemologies, which increasingly valued empirical scientific knowledge over long-held beliefs. Based on a wide range of published and archival sources, the book illuminates new economic sensibilities within a range of established and more novel scientific disciplines (including astronomy, physics, ethnography, geology, and chemistry/alchemy). By tracing these developments within the wider social and cultural fields of everyday commercial life, the study offers a fascinating insight into the relationship between economic knowledge and science during the early-modern period.

The Cambridge History of Reformation Era Theology

Author : Kenneth G Appold
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1009302973
Total Pages : 921 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (93 download)

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Book Synopsis The Cambridge History of Reformation Era Theology by : Kenneth G Appold

Download or read book The Cambridge History of Reformation Era Theology written by Kenneth G Appold and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2023-09-30 with total page 921 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume studies Reformation-Era theology by comparing how various denominations formulated and treated topics, thus encouraging ecumenical dialogue. It will remain the definitive place for teachers and students of theology to begin any further study into the origins and formulation of their denomination's teachings during this period.

The Reopening of the Western Mind

Author : Charles Freeman
Publisher : Knopf
ISBN 13 : 0525659374
Total Pages : 817 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (256 download)

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Book Synopsis The Reopening of the Western Mind by : Charles Freeman

Download or read book The Reopening of the Western Mind written by Charles Freeman and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2023-02-07 with total page 817 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A monumental and exhilarating history of European thought from the end of Antiquity to the beginning of the Enlightenment—500 to 1700 AD—tracing the arc of intellectual history as it evolved, setting the stage for the modern era. With more than 140 illustrations; 90 in full-color. Charles Freeman, lauded historical scholar and author of The Closing of the Western Mind (“A triumph”—The Times [London]), explores the rebirth of Western thought in the centuries that followed the demise of the classical era. As the dominance of Christian teachings gradually subsided over time, a new open-mindedness made way for the ideas of morality and theology, and fueled and formed the backbone of the Western mind of the late Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and beyond. In this wide-ranging history, Freeman follows the immense intellectual development that culminated in the Enlightenment, from political ideology to philosophy and theology, as well as the fine arts and literature. He writes, in vivid detail, of how Europeans progressed from the Christian-minded thinking of Saint Augustine to the more open-minded later scholars, such as Michel de Montaigne, leading to a broader, more “humanist” way of thinking. He explores how the discovery of America fundamentally altered European conceptions of humanity, religion, and science; how the rise of Protestantism and the Reformation profoundly influenced the tenor of politics and legal systems, with enormous repercussions; and how the radical Christianity of philosophers such as Spinoza affected a rethinking of the concept of religious tolerance that has influenced the modern era ever since.