Renaissance Medievalisms

In the wake of the extensive debates over terminology that have occupied historians of the “Renaissance” over the last few decades, there seems to be some movement towards a compromise that postulates both a rebirth and a multifaceted continuum. Such a solution allows for the awareness of a “rebirth” clearly evident in intellectuals and artists of the Renaissance, for the reformulation of that awareness as a historical construct by nineteenth- and twentieth-century scholars, and also for the idea of a slowly developing continuum in European society leading up to the “modernity” that is us. The articles in this collection seek to contribute to the ongoing debate on the Renaissance and further our understanding of this brilliant period in European history and culture. The collection’s premise is that there obviously was some continuity from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, but also that the world did change dramatically and that this change is evident, in part, in the manner the “Renaissance” used, adapted, and manipulated its “medieval” inheritance.

KONRAD EISENBICHLER is professor of Renaissance Studies and past director of the Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies at Victoria College, University of Toronto.

REVIEWS
English Studies in Canada, 35.2-3 (2009), pp. 218-220. Reviewed by Stephen Guy-Bray.
Renaissance Quarterly, 62.4 (2009), pp. 1229-1231. Reviewed by Deanne Williams.
The Review of English Studies, 60.247 (2009), pp. 808-809. Reviewed by David Matthews.
The Sixteenth Century Journal, 41.3 (2010), pp. 862-863. Reviewed by Ian Frederick Moulton.