A Renaissance Reclaimed Jacob Burckhardt's Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy Reconsidered

A Renaissance Reclaimed brings together an international team of historians of scholarship, politics, religion, literature, and ideas, whose expertise straddles the Renaissance and nineteenth century, to evaluate the achievement and legacy of the most famous work by the Swiss 'father of cultural history' Jacob Burckhardt (1818-97): The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy (1860). The capaciousness of Burckhardt's vision, which embraced fashion, false teeth, and hair extensions as well as the 'State as a work of art', development of the individual, revival of antiquity, discovery of the world and of man, society and festivals, and morality and religion, has never been equalled. Insights in this volume are made possible by the new critical edition that only serves to emphasise how artful Burckhardt's reading of primary (pre-eminently literary rather than art-historical) sources was. It also shows how Burckhardt's ambivalence towards the Renaissance reflected his deep anxieties about the social and political corollaries of modernisation.

Stefan Bauer, King's College London,Simon Ditchfield, University of York

Stefan Bauer is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and of the Higher Education Academy and has taught at the universities of York, Royal Holloway, Warwick and King's College London as well as in Switzerland, Germany, and Italy.


Simon Ditchfield is professor of early modern history at the University of York, where he has taught for over thirty years. His research interests encompass religious history and the history of history writing. He is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and a member of the Accademia Ambrosiana,
Milan.

Prologue: The Making of a Text
1. A Renaissance from Scraps: The Material Evidence for a New Critical Edition of Burckhardt's Book
2. 'A Centaur at the Edge of the Forest': Jacob Burckhardt as Cultural Historian
Part 1: The State as a Work of Art
3. 'The State as a Work of Art': State and Politics in Burckhardt and in Italian Renaissance Political Thought
Part 2: The Development of the Individual
4. The Performance of Identity in Renaissance Italy
5. Expressions of the Self in Burckhardt's Renaissance
Part 3: The Revival of Antiquity
6. The Colours of Antiquity in Burckhardt's Portrait of the Renaissance in Italy
7. Burckhardt, Humanists, and the Remains of Antiquity
Part 4: The Discovery of the World and of Man
8. What is Left of the Renaissance? The Discovery of the World and of Man from a Cosmopolitan Perspective
9. Burckhardt's (New) World and Ours: Rethinking the Renaissance in the Age of Global History
Part 5: Society and Festivals
10. 'A heightened moment in the life of the people'? Festivals in their Social Context and Burckhardt's Legacy to Modern Festival Research
Part 6: Morality and Religion
11. Burckhardt's Beliefs and Renaissance Religions
12. Burckhardt, Religion, and the 'Principle of Correction': From Renaissance to Reformation
Afterword