Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Palgrave Advances offer a series of innovative books that orientate graduate and upper-level students within the current state of a field of study. Bringing together leading international scholars, each text surveys, questions and pushes the boundaries of the discipline. Foregrounding new research, these books seek to map the future direction of the field and as such are invaluable for students, scholars and lecturers. This book is the first comprehensive study of the historiography of the Renaissance since Wallace Ferguson's The Renaissance in Historical Thought of 1948. Taking its departure both from developments in history-writing during the Renaissance itself, and from Jacob Burckhardt's hugely influential and controversial characterization of the Renaissance of 1860, the collection of essays explores recent developments in understandings of the Renaissance from a range of different but interlocking chronological, geographical and disciplinary perspectives. Written by an international team of experts, this book is the essential guide to the modern Renaissance debate.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Preface
• Part I Time
• Renaissance Humanism and Historiography Today
• Burckhardt and the Modern Renaissance Tradition
• The Beginning and End of the Renaissance
• Part II Transmissions
• Florence and Italy
• Italy and Europe Europe and the World
• Part III Historical Disciplines
• The Renaissance and Cultural and Intellectual History Art and Material Culture Literature
• Religion
• Society Gender
• Science
• Political History and Political Thought
• Index

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

This collection, intended as an update to Wallace Ferguson's The Renaissance in Historical Thought (1948), includes 13 essays written at a high level by widely acknowledged leaders in the field of Renaissance studies. All assess historiography of various fields of the European Renaissance in the last two generations, in dialog with the seminal work of Jacob Burckhardt. Helpfully and notably, considering the US preoccupation with this subject, several essays from experts outside the US are included. Aside from their extensive, detailed engagement with Burckhardt, essays assume prior knowledge about Renaissance historiography. Contributions on the modern historiography of humanism and its context in Florentine civic culture, as well as the historiography of art, society, and religion, are particularly strong and readable. With the exception of pieces on southern Italy and the global diffusion of the Renaissance, however, most of these essays reveal the extent to which uses of the term "Renaissance" are still focused on Italy. While no clear interpretive consensus emerges from the volume, and specialists must continue reading Ferguson, this useful book should help graduate students prepare for comprehensive examinations and nonspecialist faculty update their knowledge in the area. ^BSumming Up: Recommended. Graduate students/faculty. S. R. Boettcher University of Texas at Austin

Author notes provided by Syndetics

DAVID ABULAFIA Professor of Mediterranean History, Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, UKROBERT BLACK Professor of Renaissance History, University of Leeds, UKWARREN BOUTCHER Lecturer, Queen Mary University of London, UKJUDITH BROWN Professor of History, Faculty of Modern History, University of Oxford, UKPETER BURKE Professor of History, Emmanuel College, Cambridge, UKRICCARDO FUBINI Professor of Renaissance History, University of Florence, ItalyJAMES HANKINS Professor of Early Modern European History, Harvard University, Massachusetts, USAJOHN J. MARTIN Professor of History, Trinity University, San Antonio, Texas, USAJOHN M. NAJEMY Professor of History, Cornell University, New York, USABRIAN W. OGILVIE Associate Professor of History, University of Massachusetts Amhurst, Massachusetts, USAALESSANDRO ARCANGELI Lecturer in Renaissance and Early Modern History, University of Verona, ItalyCATHERINE M. SOUSSLOFF Professor of History of Art and Visual Culture, University of California, Santa Cruz, USA