The Lost Italian Renaissance: Humanists, Historians, and Latin's Legacy

by Christopher S. Celenza

Winner, Phyllis Goodhart Gordan Book Prize, Renaissance Society of America The intellectual heritage of the Italian Renaissance rivals that of any period in human history. Yet even as the social, political, and economic history of Renaissance Italy inspires exciting and innovative scholarship, the study of its intellectual history has grown less appealing, and our understanding of its substance and significance remains largely defined by the work of nineteenth-century thinkers. In The Lost Italian Renaissance , historian and literary scholar Christopher Celenza argues that serious interest in the intellectual life of Renaissance Italy can be reinvigorated—and the nature of the Renaissance itself reconceived—by recovering a major part of its intellectual and cultural activity that has been largely ignored since the Renaissance was first "discovered": the vast body of works—literary, philosophical, poetic, and religious—written in Latin. Produced between the mid-fourteenth and the early sixteenth centuries by major figures such as Leonardo Bruni, Lorenzo Valla, Marsilio Ficino, and Leon Battista Alberti, as well as minor but interesting thinkers like Lapo da Castiglionchio the Younger, this literature was initially overlooked by scholars of the Renaissance because they were not written in the vernacular Italian which alone was seen as was the supreme expression of a culture. This lack of attention, which continued well into the twentieth century, has led interpreters to misread key aspects of the Renaissance. Offering a flexible theoretical framework within which to understand these Latin texts, Celenza explains why these "lost" sources are distinctive and why they are worthy of study. What will we really find among the Latin texts of the Renaissance? First, Celenza contends, there are a limited number of intellectuals who deserve a place in any canon of the period, and without whom our literary and philosophical heritage is diminished. Second, and more commonly, this literature establishes the intellectual traditions from which such well-known vernacular writers as Machiavelli and Castiglione emerge. And third, these Latin texts may contain strands of intellectual life that have been lost altogether. A groundbreaking work of intellectual history, The Lost Italian Renaissance uncovers a priceless intellectual legacy suggests provocative new avenues of research.

Genres: History

232 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

Reviews

[John David · Rating 3 out of 5]

For some reason, I have lately been the lucky recipient of numerous academic catalogues, especially from university presses that are having sales with as much as 75% off. One of the more recent ones, from Johns Hopkins, had this in it, and for a mere five dollars. It might have been better-suited for someone more thoroughly steeped in the formal study of the Italian Renaissance than I can admit to being, but what it had to say about the current state of study in this area was interesting. It certainly couches many of the problems of contemporary Italian Renaissance studies in interesting ways, and makes the reader privy to a lot of “insider” information. In this book, Celenza is mostly concerned with the formation and current state of Renaissance studies, and particularly the effects that certain sources (or lack thereof) have wrought upon that study.

“The Lost Italian Renaissance” is more a series of interconnected essays on a group of related themes than it is a book with a continuous argument. The first essay argues that twentieth-century Italian Renaissance studies seriously suffers from a lack of sources that were originally written in Latin for a number of reasons, but mostly because scholars from the previous (that is, the nineteenth) century thought that non-vernacular languages were of at most secondary importance (mostly because of the rise of nationalist conceptions of history, like that of Herder). Because of this, many of the most important sources in Latin have still not been sourced, recorded, and critically edited for the sake of posterity. The second chapter discusses two contemporary scholars in the field, Eugenio Garin and Paul Oskar Kristeller, their approaches to comparative historiography, and how they each contributed to a rediscovery of these important Latin manuscripts.

The rest of the book tries to construct an approach to the Italian Renaissance by looking at philosophical approaches to history including the synchronic and diachronic and looking at the way individual thinkers, including Claude Levi-Strauss and Richard Rorty, have thought about these problems. The last chapters try to build case studies in model intellectual history upon the ideas he has offered. He uses one essay to compare Lorenzo Valla to Marcilio Ficino, and the next to look at how traditional ideas of honor in the Italian Renaissance were tied to notions of masculinity and gender construction.

I would recommend this to anyone with a formal, academic interest in this area. I felt that I definitely would have learned more had I been more familiar with some of the problematic aspects of what Celenza was talking about, including the contributions of Eugenio Garin and Paul Oskar Kristeller.

[isabella]

free me from my degree

[Barry Torch · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is basically the go-to book to understand many of the main concepts on how historians think about humanism, the intellectual history of the Renaissance, and how the historian's craft works to understand Renaissance intellectuals. A short book, it remains a tour-de-force on some of the biggest problems, and opportunities, facing historians of the Italian Renaissance.

[Charlie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is about the academic study of the Italian Renaissance and is suitable only for those engaging in scholarly activity. Celenza's book is really a diagnosis of the rather frail field of Renaissance studies in North America and some recommended remedies.

Unlike other historical fields, Renaissance studies was not significantly affected by academic trends of the last half-century, such as gender studies and a more contextual approach to intellectual history. This separation from the academy has led to the marginalization and disappearance of Ren studies departments. A significant reason that Ren studies failed to make use of these trends is that the sources themselves have not been extensively catalogued and analyzed. Until the middle of the 20th century, academic fashion favored vernacular texts and treatises directly related to politics, resulting in an enormous body of "lost" Latin literature, not so much missing as ignored. Celenza believes that more attention to editing and translating Renaissance texts can revive the field. He also offers an essay modeling a more social approach to intellectual history (Valla and Ficino) and an essay employing analytical tools from gender studies (Honor).

As someone working with the late Renaissance outside Italy, I found Celenza's historiographical narrative quite useful. I now understand better the peculiarities of the secondary literature and the state of primary sources (circa 2004). Unfortunately, I don't think this book offered much information about the Renaissance itself or even the body of "lost" literature that it presents as so important. One whole chapter and parts of others seemed too far removed from the topic at hand to shed any but indirect light on the question.