Lucretius and the Epicureans in the Social and Political Context of Renaissance Florence

Abstract

Some publications and recent articles Bartolomeo Scala, 1430–1497, Chancellor of Florence: the Humanist as Bureaucrat, Princeton University Press, N.J. 1979. 366pp; translated into Italian and published by Le Monnier, Florence, 1990, with illustrations The Renaissance, Seminar Studies in History, Longmans, 1988 (8th impression 1995). 130pp; 2nd (revised edition), 1999. The Medici in Florence. The Exercise and Language of Power, Olschki, Florence and the University of W.Australia, Perth, 1992. Collected essays. 346pp. Francesco Guicciardini, Dialogo del Reggimento di Firenze, first English translation and critical edition, Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought, Cambridge U.P., 1994, repr.1999. xxxvi + 218pp. Bartolomeo Scala. Humanistic and Political Writings: the complete letters and literary writings (excluding only the histories) of Scala in Latin and Italian, including much inedited material. Medieval and Renaissance Texts Society, Arizona, 1997, pp. xli + 560. Language and Images in Renaissance Italy, edited by, with introduction , Oxford University Press, 1995. 'Un gruppo di politici fiorentini alla fine del Quattrocento', in I ceti dirigenti in Firenze dal Gonfalonierato di Giustizia a via all'avvento del Ducato', ed. R.Fubini, Florence, 2000, pp. 47-68. 'The language of Florentine imperialism', Florentine Tuscany: Structures and Practices of Power, eds. W.Connell and A.Zorzi, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp. 32-47. . 'The Revolution of 1494 in Florence and its aftermath: a reassessment,' in Culture in Crisis: Italy in the 1490s, eds. J.Everson and D.Zancani, Oxford (Legenda, European Humanities Research Centre), 2000, pp. 13-40. 'Ideology and faction in Savonarolan Florence', in The World of Savonarola: Italian Elites in Crisis, 1494–1519, ed. S. Fletcher, 2000, pp. 22-41. 'Il linguaggio dell' impero', Lo Stato territoriale fiorentino (secoli XIV-XV): ricerche, linguaggi, confronti, ed. A. Zorzi and W. J. Connell, Pisa, 2001, pp. 255-270. 'Smascherare il repubblicanesimo rinascimentale', Politica e cultura nelle repubbliche italiane dal medioevo all'età moderna: Firenze-Genova-Lucca-Siena-Venezia, ed. S. Adorni Braccesi and M. Ascheri, Rome, 2001, pp. 109–133. 'Lorenzo's new men and their mores: the changing lifestyle of Quattrocento Florence', Renaissance Studies, 16 (2002): 113–142. 'Insiders and Outsiders: the Changing Boundaries of Exile', Society and Individual in Renaissance Florence, ed. W. Connell, Berkeley, 2002, pp. 337-383. 'Lucretius and the Epicureans in the Social and Political Context of Renaissance Florence', I Tatti Studies, 9 (2000), pp. 11-62 (forthcoming). 'Intellectual and Religious Currents in the post-Savonarola Years', The figure of Girolamo Savonarola and his influence in Spain and Europe, ed. J. Benevent and D. Weinstein, forthcoming. 'Uffici di onore e utile e la crisi del repubblicanesimo a Firenze', Archivio storico italiano, forthcoming (2003). Revivals and Otherness: some thoughts on the Italian Renaissance as a model of cultural renewal. A decade ago Peter Burke, a leading historian of the Italian Renaissance, wrote that "if we of the late twentieth century are to understand the Italian Renaissance, we would be well advised to approach it as an alien, or, at the very least ... as a half-alien culture, indeed one which is receding from us, becoming more alien every year". Taking this as my starting point, I shall use the idea of alienation and otherness as a means of probing the relevance not only of classical culture to the Italian Renaissance but also of the Italian Renaissance to nineteenth-century writers, as well as to ourselves today. Whether we look at the attitudes of humanists like Petrarch, historians like Machiavelli, artists like Alberti or philosophers like Ficino, what we see after their initial approach to ancient culture as aliens, is appropriation and then apparent rejection - the ancients being "wrong about many things", they all eventually admitted. Despite this outward rejection, however, there was longer-term assimilation in areas where the otherness seemed initially most marked and dangerous, to do with the random, fortuitous nature of the world and the changing, protean nature of man. A similar process can be seen at work in the interest of nineteenth-century writers in the Italian Renaissance at another moment of changing beliefs and views about the world, raising in conclusion questions about our own attitude to these revivals today: as they get more distant from us, should we should approach them with increasing detachment as anthropologists, or should we probe more deeply the reasons for our continuing interest in their relevance? Restricted Bibliography Grafton, Anthony, New World, Ancient Texts: the power of tradition and the shock of discovery, Cambridge, Ma, 1992. id. Bring Out Your Dead: the past as revelation, Cambridge, Ma., 2001, esp. section I. Hankins, James, ed. Renaissance Civic Humanism. Reappraisals and Reflections, Cambridge, 2000, esp. chs. 3 (Najemy), 5 (Hankins), 6 (Brown), 9 (Nederman). Brown, Alison, "Lucretius and the Epicureans in the social and political context of Renaissance Florence", I Tatti Studies, Essays in the Renaissance, 9 (2000). Farago, Claire, ed. Reframing the Renaissance: visual culture in Europe and Latin America, 1450–1650, New Haven and London, 1995.