English Humanist Books: Writers and Patrons, Manuscript and Print, 1475-1525; Framing Authority: Sayings, Self, and Society in Sixteenth-Century England
Year: 2009
Type: article
Abstract: Both these books share what has become in recent years a prevailing desire to humanize the humanists, as it were: to remind us that humanists did not live by Ciceronian sententiae alone, but required bread and were obliged to develop elaborate strategies of salesmanship in order to secure it.While this unromantic vision of the humanists has always existed -it was first expressed by contemporaries who felt their own social and political franchise endangeredthe work of Anthony Grafton and Lisa Jardine, in particular, has provided a fresh impetus to see Renaissance humanism in all its glorious confusion of mixed motives, uncertain results, and scrappy opportunism.Yet neither of the books under review proposes a mere subversion of humanist activity.Rather, both authors complicate the essential tools of the working humanist: the carefully crafted volumes presented to actual or potential patrons; the printed texts
Source: Renaissance and Reformation
Authors: David R. Carlson (author, first book), Mary Thomas Crane (author, second book), Samuel Glen Wong (review author)
Institutions: University of Toronto, Princeton University
Language: English
Subfield: History
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W2200439371