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The book explores the philosophical thinking of Petrarch and Boccaccio in contrast to the writings of contemporary mendicants. Examining both Latin and vernacular works, it investigates how these humanists poetically express the temporal, subjective, and emotional quality of moral sensibility, in a way that shifts to the reader the weight of discerning the ethical message.
The book centers its analysis on a series of paradoxes pondered by these humanists: the self that changes yet persists over time; the awareness of self-deception; the individual's validation of authority; and the ethics of pleasure.
This study is valuable to those interested in Renaissance philosophy, literature, religion, and the history of ideas.
The book centers its analysis on a series of paradoxes pondered by these humanists: the self that changes yet persists over time; the awareness of self-deception; the individual's validation of authority; and the ethics of pleasure.
This study is valuable to those interested in Renaissance philosophy, literature, religion, and the history of ideas.
Price: $174.00
Pages: 320
Publisher: Brill
Imprint: Brill
Series: Brill's Studies in Intellectual History
Publication Date:
23 December 2005
ISBN: 9789004146372
Format: Hardcover
Kircher’s combined talent for literary criticism and historical contextualization results in a most rewarding fusion which should be of inspiration to a new generation of Renaissance scholars.
Rocco Rubini, Forum Italicum 42.1 (2008): 231-33
Kircher has given the field an important work of literary criticism and philosophical investigation worthy of consideration from all scholars of Giovanni Boccaccio, challenging the reader to regard the Decameron as a foundational text of the philosophy of Italian Humanism.
Jason Houston, Heliotropia, 6.1-2 (2009)
The Poet's Wisdom illustrates conclusively how fundamental these exchanges [between humanists, clerics and layman] are to understanding the central thinkers and texts of Renaissance Italy.
Emily O'Brien, Erasmus Rotterdam Society Yearbook, 29 (2009): 108-114
Readers... will find the textual analyses of The Poet’s Wisdom wonderfully rich and rewarding. Kircher excavates their meaning and significance while accounting for social, political, and intellectual influences upon them, and with the skills of an acute literary critic he measures them carefully against the writings of mendicant preachers. He brings to the task a comprehensive interest in the philosophy of history, textual hermeneutics, and the integral relationship between style and thought, as parenthetical references to the theoretical work of Søren Kierkegaard, Martin Heidegger, Hans Blumenberg, and G. Heath King enrich his detailed footnotes on the relevant scholarship in history, literary studies, theology, and philosophy. This is a head-clearing book that will reward scholars in all those fields.
Wiliam Kennedy, Renaissance Quarterly, 2006
Like Ronald Witt’s In the Footstep of the Ancients, Kircher’s The Poet’s Wisdom sheds new light on a critical period in the emergence of modern Western thought and letters.
David Marsh, Italian Quarterly, 2005.
The Poet's Wisdom is an excellent book. Its clarity of argument of exemplary, and it presents a convincing picture of the Decameron that answers some questions that have been nagged at critics over the years. It is a splendid addition to our understanding of early humanism and, especially, provides a new way of interpreting the Decameron. It should be read by scholars and students alike for its insights into the emerging world of Italian humanism.
Stephen Kolsky, Speculum (2007) 1006-1007.
Rocco Rubini, Forum Italicum 42.1 (2008): 231-33
Kircher has given the field an important work of literary criticism and philosophical investigation worthy of consideration from all scholars of Giovanni Boccaccio, challenging the reader to regard the Decameron as a foundational text of the philosophy of Italian Humanism.
Jason Houston, Heliotropia, 6.1-2 (2009)
The Poet's Wisdom illustrates conclusively how fundamental these exchanges [between humanists, clerics and layman] are to understanding the central thinkers and texts of Renaissance Italy.
Emily O'Brien, Erasmus Rotterdam Society Yearbook, 29 (2009): 108-114
Readers... will find the textual analyses of The Poet’s Wisdom wonderfully rich and rewarding. Kircher excavates their meaning and significance while accounting for social, political, and intellectual influences upon them, and with the skills of an acute literary critic he measures them carefully against the writings of mendicant preachers. He brings to the task a comprehensive interest in the philosophy of history, textual hermeneutics, and the integral relationship between style and thought, as parenthetical references to the theoretical work of Søren Kierkegaard, Martin Heidegger, Hans Blumenberg, and G. Heath King enrich his detailed footnotes on the relevant scholarship in history, literary studies, theology, and philosophy. This is a head-clearing book that will reward scholars in all those fields.
Wiliam Kennedy, Renaissance Quarterly, 2006
Like Ronald Witt’s In the Footstep of the Ancients, Kircher’s The Poet’s Wisdom sheds new light on a critical period in the emergence of modern Western thought and letters.
David Marsh, Italian Quarterly, 2005.
The Poet's Wisdom is an excellent book. Its clarity of argument of exemplary, and it presents a convincing picture of the Decameron that answers some questions that have been nagged at critics over the years. It is a splendid addition to our understanding of early humanism and, especially, provides a new way of interpreting the Decameron. It should be read by scholars and students alike for its insights into the emerging world of Italian humanism.
Stephen Kolsky, Speculum (2007) 1006-1007.
Timothy Kircher, Ph.D. (1989) in History, Yale University, is Professor of History at Guilford College, Greensboro, North Carolina.