The Last Days of the Renaissance: & the March to Modernity
Modern historians are often loathe to utilizeperiodizationin describing the transformation of civilizations. Rabb, a Princeton professor of Renaissance and early modern history, does not shy away from the term as he describes the emergence of "modern" Western civilization in the seventeenth century. While acknowledging that any historical transformation has evolutionary aspects, Rabb convincingly asserts that the civilizations of seventeenth-century Europe were based on a radical break with the period usually referred to as the Renaissance. That period was characterized by certain "unities" and common assumptions, including an idealization of classical civilization, a domestication of the aristocracy that modified their role as warriors, and the end of clerical monopoly of education. In the seventeenth century, Rabb sees a forward-looking civilization that, in some cases, seems to disdain and discard the past as it opens to innovations that shatter assumptions about society, science, and man's role in the cosmos. This is an engrossing and often provocative work geared to those with a solid knowledge of European political and intellectual history.Jay FreemanCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved