Acknowledgments Introduction I. Histories and Traditions 1. Panofsky, Alberti, and the Ancient World 2. The Ancient City Restored: Archaeology, Ecclesiastical History, and Egyptology 3. The Hand and the Soul 4. The Rest versus the West II. Humanism and Science 5. The New Science and the Traditions of Humanism 6. Civic Humanism and Scientific Scholarship at Leiden III. Communities of Learning 7. Printers' Correctors and the Publication of Classical Texts 8. Those Humanists! 9. The World of the Polyhistors: Humanism and Encyclopedism 10. Jean Hardouin: The Antiquary as Pariah 11. Petronius and Neo-Latin Satire: The Reception of the Cena Trimalchionis IV. Profiles 12. Portrait of Justus Lipsius 13. Descartes the Dreamer 14. An Introduction to the New Science of Giambattista Vico 15. Jacob Bernays, Joseph Scaliger, and Others Notes Sources Index
Anthony Grafton is the author of The Footnote, Defenders of the Text, Forgers and Critics, and Inky Fingers, among other books. The Henry Putnam University Professor of History and the Humanities at Princeton University, he writes regularly for the New York Review of Books.
Bring Out Your Dead is the latest collection of essays by Anthony
Grafton, our most prolific and engaging scholar of early modern
European thought. Here are reflections on humanism, the ancient
city, the critical reception of the celebrated 'Dinner at
Trimalchio' section of Petronius's Satyricon, the editing and
publication of classical texts, Vico's New Science (which
influenced Joyce) and much else. Many of these pieces were
originally reviews or introductions, but to read even the most
casual of Grafton's lucubrations is deeply rewarding: a civilized
mind meditating on the nature of scholarship and learning in the
West.
*Washington Post*
Grafton 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.
*Library Journal*
Many of the scholars who between the 15th century and the 19th
recovered the ancient world and created the disciplines of modern
learning were weird. And no one captures their grit, brawling and
glory like Anthony Grafton. Or with such humor; I can't think of
another intellectual historian of his stature who would give a book
a title that invokes, among other jokes, a classic Monty Python
scene… [Grafton's] passion is for understanding and, as he
confronts its pioneers who are themselves responding sharply to
ancient and contemporary writers, the polyphonic conversation
becomes a discourse about how we have become who we are. Like the
contentious people in his book, he wants to leave behind students
who are in love with discovery. May they absorb his eloquence and
his quick, tough earthiness.
*New York Times Book Review*
Anthony Grafton prefers the 'brighter side' of the European
Renaissance. He does not spend much time harping on about all those
evil '-isms' revisionist historians complain were also aboard that
leaky old flagship of western civilization. Instead, in this, his
latest of more than 20 witty and jargon-free books, Grafton
enthusiastically examines one of the more worthy -isms—humanism,
which enjoyed both innocent cause and generous effect on world
culture… In Bring Out Your Dead, Grafton traces the evolution of
Latin humanism from its archaeological and antiquarian beginnings
in Italy, through its emphasis on rhetoric and sometimes pedantic
exercise across the Alps (especially in the Germanic lands), and
then to its unexpected influence on the rise of enlightened
scientific and historical reasoning by the 18th century.
*Times Higher Education Supplement*
Grafton's own contribution to this tradition has been fourfold.
First, his research on Scaliger has given him firsthand knowledge
of many of the most remote and demanding branches of humanist
learning. Secondly, his omnivorous curiosity and astonishing energy
have made him uniquely well-acquainted with the bibliography,
ancient and modern, of huge tracts of learning. Thirdly, he has
done more than his predecessors to bring the history of scholarship
into the mainstream and to relate it to the broader history of
social and cultural change. Finally, and perhaps most important, he
is a superb expositor. He writes with such wit, eloquence, and
baroque exuberance, and his prose is so free from obfuscating
academic jargon, that he succeeds in engaging the reader's interest
in what would otherwise seem impossibly arcane subject matter…
Anthony Grafton [is] one of the outstanding historians of our
time.
*New York Review of Books*
This mischievously titled book is a collection of eighteen essays,
or rather a learned miscellany that deals with the history of
historians of scholarship in the Renaissance and Early Modern
period. Students who dip into its pages will be delighted to find
that wholesale borrowing, plagiarism, pastiche, misattribution and
even imposture have a venerable history in academic life. Anthony
Grafton's lucid, witty and often allusive prose brings to life not
only a pantheon of eccentric individuals, but in keeping with the
promise of the title makes the stuff of intellectual endeavour
exciting… Studies on the history of early print culture are
multiplying, but I found Grafton's summary of the explosion of
printed material and the changes in readers' tastes (such as the
decline in Latin publications after 1700) a clear and concise guide
to the 'communicative shifts' in Early Modern Europe… This is a
book no scholar of the period should be without.
*Parergon*
Bring Out Your Dead is the latest collection of essays by
Anthony Grafton, our most prolific and engaging scholar of early
modern European thought. Here are reflections on humanism, the
ancient city, the critical reception of the celebrated 'Dinner at
Trimalchio' section of Petronius's Satyricon, the editing
and publication of classical texts, Vico's New Science
(which influenced Joyce) and much else. Many of these pieces were
originally reviews or introductions, but to read even the most
casual of Grafton's lucubrations is deeply rewarding: a civilized
mind meditating on the nature of scholarship and learning in the
West. * Washington Post *
Grafton 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. -- Robert J. Andrews * Library Journal *
Many of the scholars who between the 15th century and the 19th
recovered the ancient world and created the disciplines of modern
learning were weird. And no one captures their grit, brawling and
glory like Anthony Grafton. Or with such humor; I can't think of
another intellectual historian of his stature who would give a book
a title that invokes, among other jokes, a classic Monty
Python scene... [Grafton's] passion is for understanding and,
as he confronts its pioneers who are themselves responding sharply
to ancient and contemporary writers, the polyphonic conversation
becomes a discourse about how we have become who we are. Like the
contentious people in his book, he wants to leave behind students
who are in love with discovery. May they absorb his eloquence and
his quick, tough earthiness. -- D. J. R. Bruckner * New York Times
Book Review *
Anthony Grafton prefers the 'brighter side' of the European
Renaissance. He does not spend much time harping on about all those
evil '-isms' revisionist historians complain were also aboard that
leaky old flagship of western civilization. Instead, in this, his
latest of more than 20 witty and jargon-free books, Grafton
enthusiastically examines one of the more worthy -isms-humanism,
which enjoyed both innocent cause and generous effect on world
culture... In Bring Out Your Dead, Grafton traces the
evolution of Latin humanism from its archaeological and antiquarian
beginnings in Italy, through its emphasis on rhetoric and sometimes
pedantic exercise across the Alps (especially in the Germanic
lands), and then to its unexpected influence on the rise of
enlightened scientific and historical reasoning by the 18th
century. -- Samuel Edgerton * Times Higher Education Supplement
*
Grafton's own contribution to this tradition has been fourfold.
First, his research on Scaliger has given him firsthand knowledge
of many of the most remote and demanding branches of humanist
learning. Secondly, his omnivorous curiosity and astonishing energy
have made him uniquely well-acquainted with the bibliography,
ancient and modern, of huge tracts of learning. Thirdly, he has
done more than his predecessors to bring the history of scholarship
into the mainstream and to relate it to the broader history of
social and cultural change. Finally, and perhaps most important, he
is a superb expositor. He writes with such wit, eloquence, and
baroque exuberance, and his prose is so free from obfuscating
academic jargon, that he succeeds in engaging the reader's interest
in what would otherwise seem impossibly arcane subject matter...
Anthony Grafton [is] one of the outstanding historians of our time.
-- Keith Thomas * New York Review of Books *
This mischievously titled book is a collection of eighteen essays,
or rather a learned miscellany that deals with the history of
historians of scholarship in the Renaissance and Early Modern
period. Students who dip into its pages will be delighted to find
that wholesale borrowing, plagiarism, pastiche, misattribution and
even imposture have a venerable history in academic life. Anthony
Grafton's lucid, witty and often allusive prose brings to life not
only a pantheon of eccentric individuals, but in keeping with the
promise of the title makes the stuff of intellectual endeavour
exciting... Studies on the history of early print culture are
multiplying, but I found Grafton's summary of the explosion of
printed material and the changes in readers' tastes (such as the
decline in Latin publications after 1700) a clear and concise guide
to the 'communicative shifts' in Early Modern Europe... This is a
book no scholar of the period should be without. -- Dosia Reichardt
* Parergon *
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