The Waning of the Renaissance, 1550-1640

Yale Intellectual History of the West

by William J. Bouwsma

In this brilliant new book, William J. Bouwsma amends the conventional view of the European Renaissance as the root and foundation of modern culture, arguing instead that while it had a beginning and a climax, the Renaissance also had an ending. Bouwsma examines closely the waning of the Renaissance culture of freedom and creativity, and he offers an original interpretation of the place of the Renaissance in modern culture. Intellectual History of the West Series

Genres: History, Renaissance, Academic, Nonfiction

304 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 2000

About the author

William James Bouwsma was an American scholar and historian of the European Renaissance. He was Sather Professor of History Emeritus at the University of California Berkeley and president of the American Historical Association (AHA) in 1978.

Reviews

[Marc Lamot · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting views, but not always convincing. Rather focused on the higher culture, a select group of authors (Bodin, Sarpi, Hooker, Montaigne, Bacon, Galilei, Jonson, Shakespeare, Cervantes).
Some disturbing errors: some times he uses the word "Belgium", and speaks of the "90-year war" in the Low Countries.

[Charlie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bouwsma's work is an extremely readable and perceptive survey of a period often overshadowed by the beginning of the Reformation on one side and the Enlightenment on the other. The book turns on the ambiguity of "climax," which is both the summit of what came before and the point of the beginning of decline, or waning. Bouwsma displays this ambiguity in the period's wavering between the poles of freedom and social control, ultimately leaning toward the latter. To simplify the argument, Bouwsma sees the early Renaissance as a drive toward freedom of expression, intellectual curiosity, the autonomous self, and epistemic eclecticism. The success of these ideals provoked a reaction, namely, concern with hierarchy, order, and method. Bouwsma has captured a number of intellectuals—Montaigne, Lipsius, Bodin, Hooker—who evidence deep ambiguity, alternating between praise of individual expression and fear of novelty. Thus Bouwsma largely succeeds in not doing what many historians set out to do, presenting their subjects as coherent, orderly thinkers.

If the argument is a bit skeletal, the details are where this book shines. It is a cultural history, both in moving outside of strictly intellectual studies to concern itself with the arts and a bit even with popular opinion, and in seeking cultural causes for cultural effects. Bouwsma's practice is to make a general statement about the mood or character of the age, then buttress it with a litany of quotations. This is not really proof of analysis; it is more like old-fashioned proof-texting. However, his examples do lend plausibility to his arguments, even though they rarely establish them as incontrovertible. Claims about fuzzy areas such as Zeitgeist will always be open to question. The value of this approach, though, is that it allows Bouwsma to make provocative connections among disparate materials. At the very least, this is interesting history, furnishing claims worth further testing.

One serious flaw in this work is the method (or lack thereof) of citing source material. Notes are scarce. Even direct quotations from primary sources are rarely identified. A bibliographical essay in the back ameliorates this lack, but only partially. This lack of rigor, combined with Bouwsma's anecdotal approach, reduces the use of the volume to students and scholars. It is provocative, inspiring, and original, but also a bit careless, associative, and idiosyncratic.

[Charles Nicholas Saenz · Rating 4 out of 5]

A play on the title of Johann Huizinga's "The Waning of the Middle Ages" (1924), William Bouwsma's "The Waning of the Renaissance" offers an insightful interpretation of the final years of the European Renaissance.

Following an introductory chapter designed to link the general features early modern life in Europe without pretext to separate national histories, Bousma's book unfolds in two parts. Bousma ties together the cultural forms of freedom and creativity that he see as defining the Renaissance period in six chapters:

The Liberation of the Self
The Liberation of Knowing
The Liberation of Time
The Liberation of Space
The Liberation of Politics
The Liberation of Religion

In two middle chapters ("The Worst of Times" and "Renaissance Theatre and the Crisis of the Self"), Bouwsma explores in cultural terms the warning signs of the much-vaunted seventeenth century crisis. He identifies a popular sense of discontentment with the excesses of the Renaissance. Bouwsma explores the resulting loss of confidence about the future and heightening sense of anxiety on the part of the general public in the remianing seven chapters of his book:

Toward a Culture of Order
The Reordered Self
The Quest for Certainty: From Skeptism to Science
The Decline of Historical Consciousness
Order in Society and Government
Order in Religion
Order in the Arts

The search for order represents the end of the Renaissance for Bouwsma, though he is careful not to portray the moment as a sharp one. Despite the tensions in this study, a constant theme of gradualism runs in concert with efforts to mark a major historical shift.

Bouwsma presents a fascinating look at the cultural history - a phrase he prefers to intellectual history for its inclusivity as much as its ambiguity - of seventeenth century Europe. The degree of familiarity he exhibits with his references (there are some clear favorites: Cervantes and a Montaigne among them) is quite impressive. However, given the length of the book and the breadth of material is covers, several sections seem cursory at times. This fact is largely overcome by apprectiation of Bousma's ambitious attempt to bring together so much material.

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you are picking up this work to hunt for chronollogy of the later Renaissance or to find Bouwsma's voice... don't, leave it on the shelf. The work, while easy to breeze, is not easy to digest in terms of the disparities he (unwittingly?) raised and did not answer. He calls it a Cultural history. I call it an Intellectual history as seen through the quotes of cultural figures on a variety of topics regarding culture.