Think of this as 'The Thinking Man's Bloom' or 'The Thinking Woman's Closing of the American Mind.' It takes up debates about education and reasons about them, where Bloom often only blasted away. . . . This is one of the more helpful recent statements of the case for the classics, accompanied by rather venturesome curricular suggestions. Christian Century
His exciting readable book calls for a return to a study of the classicsand of the Renaissance poets and scholars, like Petrarch, who rediscovered the classics. Michael Dirda, Washington Post Book World
. . . a splendid statement bringing together in a careful and coherent way the prospects for a solid humanities curriculum. Ernest L. Boyer
Ten years ago when this book was first published it was called Education's Great Amnesia: Reconsidering the Humanities from Petrarch to Freud. It is being reissued now in a second edition with a different title for a new generation of readers who cannot have forgotten what they never knew. What are the humanities? Can we agree on a core curriculum of humanistic studies? Robert Proctor answers these questions in a provocative, readable book.
US
A clear definition of the humanities plus a core curriculum for today's students. Winner of the 1990 Frederic W. Ness Book Award.
Robert E. Proctor is Professor of Italian at Connecticut College, where he has also served as Provost and Dean of the Faculty, and as Founding Director of the Toor Cummings Center for International Studies and the Liberal Arts. He has been a Fellow of Villa I Tatti, the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies in Florence, Italy, and of the National Humanities Institute at Yale University.
Preface to the Second Edition
Introduction
Part One: The Birth of the Humanities
The Humanist Transformation of Classical Antiquity
Petrarch and the Origins of the Humanities
Cicero in Grief: The Classical Soul Revealed
Ancient and Moderlc7
![Defining the Humanities: How Rediscovering a Tradition Can Improve Our Schools, Second Edition With a Curriculum for Today's Students [Paperback]](/itemImage/2/5/9/5/2_6825192.jpg "Defining the Humanities: How Rediscovering a Tradition Can Improve Our Schools, Second Edition With a Curriculum for Today's Students [Paperback]")