The Poet's Wisdom

The Humanists, the Church, and the Formation of Philosophy in the Early Renaissance
Erscheinungsjahr 2005
ISBN: 978-90-04-14637-2
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 133, 320 Seiten, Format (B × H): 163 mm x 244 mm, Gewicht: 717 g

Reihe: Brill's Studies in Intellectual History

The book explores the philosophical thinking of Petrarch and Boccaccio in contrast to the writings of contemporary mendicants. Examining both Latin and vernacular works, it investigates how these humanists poetically express the temporal, subjective, and emotional quality of moral sensibility, in a way that shifts to the reader the weight of discerning the ethical message.
The book centers its analysis on a series of paradoxes pondered by these humanists: the self that changes yet persists over time; the awareness of self-deception; the individual's validation of authority; and the ethics of pleasure.
This study is valuable to those interested in Renaissance philosophy, literature, religion, and the history of ideas.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Kircher, Timothy

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Kultur- und Ideengeschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgements
List of Illustrations

I. Introduction
II. Tracking the Vagaries of Time: Anxiety and Freedom in Humanist Accounts of the Plague of 1348
III. Morality’s Hazy Mirror: The Humanist Modality of Moral Communication in the Decameron
IV. The Paradox of Experience and Moral Authority in Petrarch’s Writings
V. The Sea as an Image of Temporality
VI. The Ethics of Pleasure: Faces of the Feminine
VII. Senescence and Renascence

Bibliography
Index

Über Autor(innen)

Timothy Kircher, Ph.D. (1989) in History, Yale University, is Professor of History at Guilford College, Greensboro, North Carolina.