Contesting The Renaissance

"After decades of quarrels and controversy over the meaning of the historical Renaissance in the modern world, William Caferro reminds us why all the fighting has mattered - and how much fun it has been for the participants and spectators."---William J. Connell, Selon Hall University

"An admirably wide-ranging and fair-minded survey of a vast body of literature."---Christine Shaw, Swansea University

In the nineteenth century, the Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt famously defined the Renaissance as a period of progress, reason, the emergence of the individual, and the beginning of modernity. In this book, William Caferro asks how accurate Burck hardt's definition was and summarizes recent scholarly debates about the nature of the Renaissance.

Caferro's account engages with a range of specific controversies, including the nature of the Renaissance (wo)man; whether or not the Renaissance was a period of prosperity; and how the relationship between reason and faith altered during this period. The book takes a balanced approach to the many different problems and perspectives that characterize Renaissance studies.

William Caferro is Professor of History at Vanderbilt University. His previous publications include Mercenary Companies and the Decline of Siena (1998), The Spinelli: Merchants, Patrons and Bankers in Renaissance Florence (2001), and John Hawkwood: An English Mercenary in Fourteenth-Century Italy (2006).