The Problem of Unbelief in the Sixteenth Century, the Religion of Rabelais

The Problem of Unbelief in the Sixteenth Century, the Religion of Rabelais PDF Author: Lucien Febvre
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674708266
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 556

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Book Description
Lucien Febvre's magisterial study of sixteenth century religious and intellectual history, published in 1942, is at long last available in English, in a translation that does it full justice. The book is a modern classic. Febvre, founder with Marc Bloch of the journal Annales, was one of France's leading historians, a scholar whose field of expertise was the sixteenth century. This book, written late in his career, is regarded as his masterpiece. Despite the subtitle, it is not primarily a study of Rabelais; it is a study of the mental life, the mentalit , of a whole age. Febvre worked on the book for ten years. His purpose at first was polemical: he set out to demolish the notion that Rabelais was a covert atheist, a freethinker ahead of his time. To expose the anachronism of that view, he proceeded to a close examination of the ideas, information, beliefs, and values of Rabelais and his contemporaries. He combed archives and local records, compendia of popular lore, the work of writers from Luther and Erasmus to Ronsard, the verses of obscure neo-Latin poets. Everything was grist for his mill: books about comets, medical texts, philological treatises, even music and architecture. The result is a work of extraordinary richness of texture, enlivened by a wealth of concrete details--a compelling intellectual portrait of the period by a historian of rare insight, great intelligence, and vast learning. Febvre wrote with Gallic flair. His style is informal, often witty, at times combative, and colorful almost to a fault. His idiosyncrasies of syntax and vocabulary have defeated many who have tried to read, let alone translate, the French text. Beatrice Gottlieb has succeeded in rendering his prose accurately and readably, conveying a sense of Febvre's strong, often argumentative personality as well as his brilliantly intuitive feeling for Renaissance France.

The Problem of Unbelief in the Sixteenth Century, the Religion of Rabelais

The Problem of Unbelief in the Sixteenth Century, the Religion of Rabelais PDF Author: Lucien Febvre
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674708266
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 556

Get Book Here

Book Description
Lucien Febvre's magisterial study of sixteenth century religious and intellectual history, published in 1942, is at long last available in English, in a translation that does it full justice. The book is a modern classic. Febvre, founder with Marc Bloch of the journal Annales, was one of France's leading historians, a scholar whose field of expertise was the sixteenth century. This book, written late in his career, is regarded as his masterpiece. Despite the subtitle, it is not primarily a study of Rabelais; it is a study of the mental life, the mentalit , of a whole age. Febvre worked on the book for ten years. His purpose at first was polemical: he set out to demolish the notion that Rabelais was a covert atheist, a freethinker ahead of his time. To expose the anachronism of that view, he proceeded to a close examination of the ideas, information, beliefs, and values of Rabelais and his contemporaries. He combed archives and local records, compendia of popular lore, the work of writers from Luther and Erasmus to Ronsard, the verses of obscure neo-Latin poets. Everything was grist for his mill: books about comets, medical texts, philological treatises, even music and architecture. The result is a work of extraordinary richness of texture, enlivened by a wealth of concrete details--a compelling intellectual portrait of the period by a historian of rare insight, great intelligence, and vast learning. Febvre wrote with Gallic flair. His style is informal, often witty, at times combative, and colorful almost to a fault. His idiosyncrasies of syntax and vocabulary have defeated many who have tried to read, let alone translate, the French text. Beatrice Gottlieb has succeeded in rendering his prose accurately and readably, conveying a sense of Febvre's strong, often argumentative personality as well as his brilliantly intuitive feeling for Renaissance France.

An Analysis of Lucien Febvre's The Problem of Unbelief in the 16th Century

An Analysis of Lucien Febvre's The Problem of Unbelief in the 16th Century PDF Author: Joseph Tendler
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 0429939833
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 124

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Book Description
Febvre asked this core question in The Problem of Unbelief: “Could sixteenth-century people hold religious views that were not those of official, Church-sanctioned Christianity, or could they simply not believe at all?” The answer informed a wider debate on modern history, particularly modern French history. Did the religious attitudes of the Enlightenment and the twentieth century—notably secularism and atheism—first take root in the sixteenth century? Could the spirit of scientific and rational inquiry of the twentieth century have begun with the rejection of God and Christianity by men such as Rabelais, writing in his allegorical novel Gargantua and Pantagruel – the work most often cited as a proto-"atheist" text prior to Febvre's study? The debate hinged on some key differences of interpretation. Was Rabelais mocking the structures of the Christian Church (in which case he might be anticlerical)? Was he mocking the Bible scriptures or Church doctrines (in which case he might be anti-Christian)? Or was he mocking the very idea of God’s existence (in which case he might be an atheist)? The other great contribution that Febvre made to the study of history can be found not so much in the fine detail of this work as in the additions that he made to the historian's toolkit. In this sense, Febvre was highly creative; indeed it can be argued that he ranks among the most creative of all historians. He sought to move the study of history itself beyond its traditional focus on documentary records, arguing instead that close analysis of language could open up a gateway into the ways in which people actually thought, and to their subconscious minds. This concept, the focus on "mentalities," is core to the hugely influential approach of the Annales group of historians, and it enabled a switch in the focus of much historical inquiry, away from the study of elites and their deeds and towards new forms of broader social history. Febvre also used techniques and models drawn from anthropology and sociology to create new ways of framing and answering questions, further extending the range of problems that could be addressed by historians. Working together with colleagues such as Marc Bloch, his understanding of what constituted evidence and of the meanings that could be attributed to it, radically redefined what history is – and what it should aspire to be.

Rabelais and His World

Rabelais and His World PDF Author: Mikhail Mikhaĭlovich Bakhtin
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 9780253203410
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 520

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Book Description
This classic work by the Russian philosopher and literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975) examines popular humor and folk culture in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. One of the essential texts of a theorist who is rapidly becoming a major reference in contemporary thought, Rabelais and His World is essential reading for anyone interested in problems of language and text and in cultural interpretation.

Life in Renaissance France

Life in Renaissance France PDF Author: Lucien Febvre
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674531802
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 188

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Book Description
In writing about sixteenth-century France, Lucien Febvre looked for those changes in human consciousness that explain the process of civilization--the most specific and tangible examples of men's experience, the most vivid details of their daily lives. These essays, written at the height of Febvre's powers and sensitively edited and translated by Marian Rothstein, are the most lucid, evocative, and accessible examples of his art.

The Sixteenth Century

The Sixteenth Century PDF Author: Euan Cameron
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191524921
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
The sixteenth century witnessed some of the most abrupt and traumatic transformations ever seen in European society and culture. Population growth strained the old fabric of community and economic relations. New supplies of precious metals from east and west re-wrote the rules of finance and commerce. Politics was dominated first by the gladiatorial struggle of two great Renaissance monarchs, then by the bitter and bloody entanglement of religion and politics. Society became more disciplined but also more fragmented. Yet this was also the age when the Renaissance became a European rather than just an Italian phenomenon, an age of art, architecture, and literature, of unprecedented reflection on the thinking person's role in government and civic life. It was the era of the Reformation and Catholic reform, when the ideals and priorities of the life of faith were examined and reshaped in the light of new readings of Scripture. For the first time Europeans not only learned more about the world beyond their continent; they reached out and grasped huge new overseas empires. Six leading scholars in their respective fields have here contributed their insights into the challenging and tumultuous sixteenth century. The economy, politics, society, and secular and religious thought all receive careful thematic treatment and analysis. A detailed picture also emerges of how Europeans made and managed their overseas empires. The volume challenges, tests, and revises the received wisdom of past accounts in the light of the most modern scholarship. The diverse experiences of regions of Europe often ignored, including the East and the Mediterranean, receive particular attention where their destinies were different from the more better-known experiences of France and Germany. Many clichés of textbook history, from the multiple 'revolutions' to the rise of the nation-states, emerge transformed from this account.

Heresy and Orthodoxy in Sixteenth-Century Paris: François Le Picart and the Beginnings of the Catholic Reformation

Heresy and Orthodoxy in Sixteenth-Century Paris: François Le Picart and the Beginnings of the Catholic Reformation PDF Author: Larissa Juliet Taylor
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004476466
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description
This is the story of Paris from the Reformation to the Religious Wars. Through the works of François Le Picart, the most popular preacher from 1530-1556, the book delineates the increasing tensions sparked by Reformation ideas. Targeted by Calvin and Beza, Le Picart was considered the reason Paris remained in the Catholic fold. Exiled by Francis I for his incendiary preaching, he would later serve as a professor and lecturer coming into close contact with the first Jesuits. A fierce opponent of heresy, he helped compile the Articles of Faith, read heretical books, lectured on scripture, and presided at executions. His 270 sermons, the only substantial preaching source for this period, offer glimpses of life during these increasingly troubled times that challenge works by Denis Crouzet suggesting that France was in the grip of eschatological anguish.

Literature and Nation in the Sixteenth Century

Literature and Nation in the Sixteenth Century PDF Author: Timothy Hampton
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501721682
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
Assessing the relationship between the emergence of modern French literary culture and the ideological debates that marked Renaissance France, Timothy Hampton explores the role of literary form in shaping national identity.The foundational texts of modern French literature were produced during a period of unprecedented struggle over the meaning of community. In the face of religious heresy, political threats from abroad, and new forms of cultural diversity, Renaissance French culture confronted, in new and urgent ways, the question of what it means to be "French." Hampton shows how conflicts between different concepts of community were mediated symbolically through the genesis of new literary forms. Hampton's analysis of works by Rabelais, Montaigne, Du Bellay, and Marguerite de Navarre, as well as writings by lesser-known poets, pamphleteers, and political philosophers, shows that the vulnerability of France and the instability of French identity were pervasive cultural themes during this period.Contemporary scholarship on nation-building in early modern Europe has emphasized the importance of centralized power and the rise of absolute monarchy. Hampton offers a counterargument, demonstrating that both community and national identity in Renaissance France were defined through a dialogic relationship to that which was not French—to the foreigner, the stranger, the intruder from abroad. He provides both a methodological challenge to traditional cultural history and a new consideration of the role of literature in the definition of the nation.

The Pleasure of Discernment

The Pleasure of Discernment PDF Author: Carol Thysell
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0195138457
Category : Allegory
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
"In The Pleasure of Discernment, Carol Thysell argues that Marguerite de Navarre's Heptameron should be understood as a profoundly theological work, dedicated to reformist ideas coming both from within and from outside France yet providing its own constructive theological vision."--BOOK JACKET.

Magical Thinking

Magical Thinking PDF Author: Stuart McWilliams
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1441192956
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
How do we write about magic? Responding to a renewed interest in the history of the occult, this volume examines the role of magic in a series of methodological controversies in the humanities. In case studies ranging from the 'necromancy' of historiography to the strident rationalism of the 'New Atheism,' Magical Thinking sets out the surprising ways in which scholars and critics have imagined the occult. The volume argues that thinking and writing about magic has engendered multiple epistemological crises, profoundly unsettling the understanding of history and knowledge in Western culture. By examining how scholarly writing has contended and conspired with discourses of enchantment, the book reveals the implications of magic - and its scholarship - for intellectual history.

Singing the Resurrection

Singing the Resurrection PDF Author: Erin M. Lambert
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019066164X
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
Singing the Resurrection brings music to the foreground of Reformation studies, as author Erin Lambert explores song as a primary mode for the expression of belief among ordinary Europeans in the sixteenth century, for the embodiment of individual piety, and the creation of new communities of belief. Together, resurrection and song reveal how sixteenth-century Christians--from learned theologians to ordinary artisans, and Anabaptist martyrs to Reformed Christians facing exile--defined belief not merely as an assertion or affirmation but as a continuous, living practice. Thus these voices, raised in song, tell a story of the Reformation that reaches far beyond the transformation from one community of faith to many. With case studies drawn from each of the major confessions of the Reformation--Lutheran, Anabaptist, Reformed, and Catholic--Singing the Resurrection reveals sixteenth-century belief in its full complexity.