The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy - Jacob Burckhardt torrent

Category: History
Language: EnglishKeywords: Civilization，Renaissance，Italy

Written by Jacob Burckhardt
Read by Geoffrey Howard
Unabridged

The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy - by Jacob Burckhardt

Narrated by Geoffrey Howard - UNABRIDGED - 128k stereo

Publisher’s Summary

In this landmark study of Italy from the 14th through the early 16th centuries, Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt chronicles the rise of Florence and Venice as powerful city-states, the breakup of the medieval worldview that came with the rediscovery of Greek and Roman culture, and the new emphasis on the role of the individual. All these, Burckhardt explains, went hand in hand with the explorations of science and the more naturalistic depiction of the world in art and literature.

Within the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Burckhardt finds the first stirrings of the modern world and, in the Renaissance Italian, the first modern man. His book-length essay includes discussions of all aspects of Italian civilization: art, fashion, literature, and the music of the time, as well as the flourishing of intellectual and spiritual life. - (P)2000 Blackstone Audio Inc.

What the Critics Say

“An engrossing world of politics and popes, religion and renegades, lifestyles and literature that few historical works encompass….a joy for devotees of the Renaissance.” (AudioFile)

Amazon Customer Reviews

“The Man Who Invented the Renaissance, September 18, 2000

Jacob Burckhardt had one of those rare minds who could construct a new synthesis out of thought, government, art, and culture — and who, for the first time, made it possible to talk about the Renaissance as a moment in the history of Western man.

This is a very dense work with flashes of genius as well as long scholarly footnotes with extensively quoted Italian and Latin. In a book by a dullard, this would be excruciating. But Burckhardt is anything but as he manages his material like a Moscow taxi driver: by accelerating and then coasting. When you least expect it, another epiphany draws you in.

Burckhardt’s Renaissance was an incredible high in the history of mankind. The Medicis, Sforzas, and Malatestas strut their way through the history of the period; Dante, Michelangelo, Raphael, and Bramante create works of the imagination that still overpower us; popes like Julius II, Alexander VI, and Leo X combine worldliness with spirituality (sometimes); and even the average man has a face and a voice for the first time.

This book will make your blood race.”

“Burckhardt the Prescient Historian, July 26, 1999

For much of the last 139 years, Jacob Burckhardt’s work has been dismissed as too “Nineteenth Century” for serious study: more literature than serious history. So much the pity. What Burckhardt left us in The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy is a magisterial, thematic, understanding of the Italian Renaissance that is far more 1990’s in its observations and human understandings than its original 1860’s. It is a shame that Burckhardt’s famous pupil, Nietzsche, didn’t learn a little more balance and discretion at his elder’s feet. This book is a joy to read. Like Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, this work shows us how history can engage the spirit, and how far off the mark some modern historians have gone with their more “scholarly” work.”

UPPER’S NOTE - NOT MY WORK - MANY THANKS TO ORIGINAL RIPPERS/UPPERS

I have included a PDF version of the book