Haverhill Public Library

The reopening of the Western mind, the resurgence of intellectual life from the end of antiquity to the dawn of the Enlightenment, Charles Freeman

eng

Includes bibliographical references and index

illustrations

index present

non fiction

The reopening of the Western mind

bibliography

1252764118

Charles Freeman

the resurgence of intellectual life from the end of antiquity to the dawn of the Enlightenment

"A history of European intellectual life from 500 AD to 1700 AD"--, Provided by publisher

Prologue. The collapse of learning -- The saving of the texts, 500- -- Charlemagne restores the discipline of learning -- Conformity and diversity in the Christian communities of the late first millennium -- The challenges of Christian leadership. Authority and dissent in the medieval church, 1000- -- Abelard and the battle for reason -- The cry of libertas, the rebirth of the city-state -- 'Completely new, without any real precedent and with an exceptional historical destiny' : success and failure within the medieval university -- The complexities of medieval philosophy : a reopening or a dead-end? -- The glimmerings of a scientific revival, 1200-1350? -- New directions in literature and political thought : Dante, Marsilius and Boccaccio and their worlds -- 'I snarl at the stupid Aristotelians' : humanism and the challenge to the scholastics -- 'It is but in our own day that men dare boast that they see the dawn of better things' : the exuberance of Florentine humanism -- The flowering of the Florentine Renaissance -- Plato re-enters the western mind -- The printing press : what was published and why? -- Filling the vacuum : the loss of papal authority and the rise of the laity, 1350- -- How Europe learned to see again : Leonardo and Vasalius -- Exploring the natural world in the sixteenth century -- Imagining princely politics, from utopia to the Machiavellian prince -- Broadening horizons : from the Laocoon to the academies. Recovering the ancient world -- Montaigne and Hamlet : peace or turmoil in the solitary soul? -- Defining global space : the mapping of the new world -- Encountering the peoples of the 'Newe founde worldes', 1492- -- Reformation : a restoration of Christian authority? -- The world of Catholic renewal -- Absolutist France versus the Dutch Republic : a study of contrasts in seventeenth century politics -- The seventeenth century : the most revolutionary century in the history of modern Britain? -- Thinking politically. Envisaging an ideal society in the seventeenth century -- From natural philosophy into science. The astronomers -- Was there an English scientific revolution? -- 'Once in a lifetime we must demolish everything' : (Descartes) did the seventeenth century see the making of the modern mind? -- Bringing it all together : was there really 'a reopening of the western mind?