Bring Out Your Dead: The Past as Revelation
In this series of essays, Grafton (Princeton Univ.; Cardano's Cosmos) 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 figure ensconced in a study surrounded by classical texts. Further, argues Grafton, the humanists did not always accept the authority of ancient texts concerning the natural world but tended to compare the classical texts with observations grounded in the European empirical method. Grafton believes that his own book is a continuation of a type of book that became popular during the Renaissance, the scholarly miscellany. Well argued but somewhat arcane, this work will be of interest to students of the Renaissance and the Western intellectual traditions. Recommended for academic and larger public libraries. Robert J. Andrews, Duluth P.L., MNCopyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.