The Development of Humanist Historiography in Florence During the Fifteenth Century

The Development of Humanist Historiography in Florence During the Fifteenth Century PDF Author: Donald J. Wilcox
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Languages : en
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The Development of Humanist Historiography in Florence During the Fifteenth Century

The Development of Humanist Historiography in Florence During the Fifteenth Century PDF Author: Donald J. Wilcox
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description


The Development of Florentine Humanist Historiography in the Fifteenth Century

The Development of Florentine Humanist Historiography in the Fifteenth Century PDF Author: Donald J. Wilcox
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674200265
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
Presenting a new interpretation of humanist historiography, Donald J. Wilcox traces the development of the art of historical writing among Florentine humanists in the fifteenth century. He focuses on the three chancellor historians of that century who wrote histories of Florence--Leonardo Bruni, Poggio Bracciolini, and Bartolommeo della Scala--and proposes that these men, especially Bruni, had a new concept of historical reality and introduced a new style of writing to history. But, he declares, their great contributions to the development of historiography have not been recognized because scholars have adhered to their own historical ideals in judging the humanists rather than assessing them in the context of their own century. Mr. Wilcox introduces his study with a brief description of the historians and historical writing in Renaissance Florence. He then outlines the development of the scholarly treatment of humanist historiography and establishes the need for a more balanced interpretation. He suggests that both Hans Baron's conception of civic humanism and Paul Oscar Kristeller's emphasis on the rhetorical character of humanism were important developments in the general intellectual history of the Renaissance and, more specifically, that they provided a new perspective on the entire question of humanist historiography. The heart of the book is a close textual analysis of the works of each of the three historians. The author approaches their texts in terms of their own concerns and questions, examining three basic elements of their art. The first is the nature of the reality the historian is re- counting. Mr. Wilcox asks, "What interests the writer? What is the substance of his narrative? ... What does he choose from his sources ... and what does he ignore? What does he interpolate into the account by drawing on his own understanding of the nature of history?" The second is the various attitudes--moral judgments, historical conceptions, analytical views--with which the historian approaches his narrative. And the third is the aspect of humanist historiography to which previous scholars have paid the least attention: the historian's narrative technique. Mr. Wilcox identifies the difficulties involved in expressing historical ideas in narrative form and describes the means the historians developed for overcoming those difficulties. He emphasizes the positive value of rhetoric in their works and points out that they "sought by eloquence to teach men virtue." He devotes three chapters to Bruni, whom he considers the most original and important of the three historians. The next two chapters deal with Poggio, and the last with Scala. Throughout the book Mr. Wilcox exposes the internal connections among the three histories, thus illustrating the basic coherence of the humanist historical art.

Humanism and Renaissance Historiography

Humanism and Renaissance Historiography PDF Author: E. B Fryde
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 0826427502
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
Edmund Fryde provides a general account of the attempt to revive and surpass the standards of classical historiography and charts its progress. The career of Politian, the librarian of Lorenzo the Magnificent, illustrates the advance in scholarship during the fifteenth century. Using new evidence from the Vatican Library the author demonstrates that Lorenzo's library can be largely reconstructed and that a wealth of manuscripts was already available in his time.

Studies in Renaissance Humanism and Politics

Studies in Renaissance Humanism and Politics PDF Author: Robert Black
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000951456
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
The fifteen articles republished here exemplify the many directions Robert Black's research in Renaissance studies has taken. The first five studies look at Renaissance humanism, in particular at its origins, and the concept of the Renaissance as well as the theory and practice of historical writing. Black also updates his monograph on the Florentine chancellor, Benedetto Accolti. Machiavelli is the subject of three articles, focusing on his education and career in the Florentine chancery. Next come Black's seminal studies of Arezzo under Florentine rule, revealing the triangular relationship between centre, periphery and the Medici family. Finally, two articles on political thought examine the relative merits of monarchical and republican government for political thinkers on both sides of the Alps.

History of the Florentine People: Books 5-8

History of the Florentine People: Books 5-8 PDF Author: Leonardo Bruni
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674010666
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 616

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Book Description
Leonardo Bruni (1370-1444), the leading civic humanist of the Italian Renaissance, served as apostolic secretary to four popes (1405-1414) and chancellor of Florence (1427-1444). He was famous in his day as a translator, orator, and historian, and was the best-selling author of the fifteenth century. Bruni's History of the Florentine People in twelve books is generally considered the first modern work of history, and was widely imitated by humanist historians for two centuries after its official publication by the Florentine Signoria in 1442. This edition makes it available for the first time in English translation.

The Humanist World of Renaissance Florence

The Humanist World of Renaissance Florence PDF Author: Brian Maxson
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107043913
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
The Humanist World of Renaissance Florence offers the first synthetic interpretation of the humanist movement in Renaissance Florence in more than fifty years.

The Intellectual Struggle for Florence

The Intellectual Struggle for Florence PDF Author: Arthur Field
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192508601
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 383

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Book Description
The Intellectual Struggle for Florence is an analysis of the ideology that developed in Florence with the rise of the Medici, during the early fifteenth century, the period long recognized as the most formative of the early Renaissance. Instead of simply describing early Renaissance ideas, this volume attempts to relate these ideas to specific social and political conflicts of the fifteenth century, and specifically to the development of the Medici regime. It first shows how the Medici party came to be viewed as fundamentally different from their opponents, the 'oligarchs', then explores the intellectual world of these oligarchs (the 'traditional culture'). As political conflicts sharpened, some humanists (Leonardo Bruni and Francesco Filelfo) with close ties to oligarchy still attempted to enrich traditional culture with classical learning, while others, such as Niccolò Niccoli and Poggio Bracciolini, rejected tradition outright and created a new ideology for the Medici party. What is striking is the extent to which Niccoli and Poggio were able to turn a Latin or classical culture into a 'popular culture', and how the culture of the vernacular remained traditional and oligarchic.

Chronicle Into History

Chronicle Into History PDF Author: Louis Green
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521088381
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 196

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Book Description
In Florence in the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, the essentially medieval values of the age of Dante were transformed into the intellectual attitudes characteristic of the early Renaissance. Mr Green examines this change as it was reflected in the works of the city's vernacular chroniclers. These merchant historians evolved out of the traditional universal chronicle of the Middle Ages an embryonic form of the modern history, exemplified at the beginning of the fifteenth century by the Istoria di Firenze of Goro Dati. In the course of this transition from chronicle to history, the world-view expressed by the chronicle - which assumed that all that happened contributed to a divinely inspired historical plan - yielded before a more selective conception of the significance of events as possible natural causes of change. At the same time, the ideals underlying the medieval sense of cosmic order, with their other worldly overtones, gave way before the more secular, humanist values of the emerging Renaissance.

Humanistic Historiography Under the Sforzas

Humanistic Historiography Under the Sforzas PDF Author: Gary Ianziti
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
Seeking to establish the city of Milan as a major center of Renaissance Italian humanism, this book explores the methods, concerns, and attitudes that influenced the humanist approach to the writing of history there. Ianziti focuses on the two works about Francesco Sforza written by his chancery employees, Crivelli and Simonetta, and considers the radical and innovative features of their work that evolved in response to a specific set of political circumstances. This unique focus provides not only a convincing argument for the evolution of humanist methods of historical writing in the latter half of the 15th century, but also a fresh look at the relationship between politics and culture in the Renaissance.

From Poliziano to Machiavelli

From Poliziano to Machiavelli PDF Author: Peter Godman
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691656703
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
Peter Godman presents the first intellectual history of Florentine humanism from the lifetime of Angelo Poliziano in the later fifteenth century to the death of Niccolo Machiavelli in 1527. Making use of unpublished and rare sources, Godman traces the development of philological and official humanism after the expulsion of the Medici in 1494 up to and beyond their restoration in 1512. He draws long overdue attention to the work of Marcello Virgilio Adriani--Poliziano's successor in his Chair at the Studio and Machiavelli's colleague at the Chancery of Florence. And he examines in depth the intellectual impact of Savonarola and the relationship between secular and religious and oral and print cultures. Godman shows a complex reaction of rivalry and antagonism in Machiavelli's approach to Marcello Virgilio, who was the leading Florentine humanist of the day. But he also demonstrates that Florentine humanists shared a common culture, marked by a preference for secular over religious themes and by constant anxiety about surviving and prospering in the city's dangerous political climate. The book concludes with an appendix, drawn from previously incaccessible archives, about the censorship of Machiavelli by the Inquisition and the Index. From Poliziano to Machiavelli adds new depth to the intellectual history of Forence during his most dynamic period in its history. Originally published in 1998. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.