Bring Out Your Dead The Past As Revelation [Paperback]

The work of the Renaissance humanists comes to life in Anthony Graftons exploration of the primary sources and modern scholarship, classical and modern elements in the world of European letters from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century.Tracing the ties that bound the world of humanistic learning in early modern Europe to other social and cultural spheres, Grafton defines the current state of the art of scholarship on early modern European cultural and intellectual history while simultaneously demonstrating how entertaining, enlightening, and relevant that history can be.Covering a dazzling variety of topics and authors as different as Alberti and Descartes, Grafton maps the grand and meticulous efforts of the past to connect the realm of nature with that of books, the realm of everyday experience with that of passionate reading in massive tomes, and the realm of codes of etiquette and institutions with that of extravagant and joyous eruditionefforts that this book itself brilliantly carries on.Bring Out Your Deadis the latest collection of essays by Anthony Grafton, our most prolific and engaging scholar of early modern European thought. Here are reflections on humanism, the ancient city, the critical reception of the celebrated 'Dinner at Trimalchio' section of Petronius'sSatyricon, the editing and publication of classical texts, Vico'sNew Science(which influenced Joyce) and much else. Many of these pieces were originally reviews or introductions, but to read even the most casual of Grafton's lucubrations is deeply rewarding: a civilized mind meditating on the nature of scholarship and learning in the West.Grafton explores the intellectual life of the Renaissance humanists, arguing that they did not work in a vacuum but rather interacted with one another and with the architects, sculptors, painters, and political theorists of their day. The result was a real intellectual community that belies the myth of the humanist scholar as solitary fil£&