The Renaissance in Europe: A Reader

The Renaissance in Europe: An Anthology The Renaissance, both as a concept and a period, continues to generate lively controversy not only among academics but also among the general public. Ever since the publication, in 1860, of Jacob Burckhardt's classic study of the Renaissance in Italy, scholars have disputed the origins of the movement and its subsequent influence on European culture and thought. This sequence of three course texts and two anthologies, published in association with the Open University, explores the Renaissance from the interdisciplinary perspective of history, literature, drama, religion, the history of art, philosophy, music and political thought. It provides students and general readers with an unprecedentedly thorough analysis of this absorbing stage in the development of Western civilization. In this vigorous and provocative collection the concept of the Renaissance is interrogated through the work of scholars who have supported or queried Burckhardt's ideas or developed alternative interpretations. The questions posed concentrate on the themes of the source and dispersal of the Renaissance. Is there a unified concept of the Renaissance, and is it a cultur