Bring Out Your Dead: The Past as Revelation

by Anthony Grafton

The work of the Renaissance humanists comes to life in Anthony Grafton’s exploration of the primary sources and modern scholarship, classical and modern elements in the world of European letters from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century. Tracing the ties that bound the world of humanistic learning in early modern Europe to other social and cultural spheres, Grafton defines the current state of the art of scholarship on early modern European cultural and intellectual history while simultaneously demonstrating how entertaining, enlightening, and relevant that history can be. Covering a dazzling variety of topics and authors as different as Alberti and Descartes, Grafton maps the grand and meticulous efforts of the past to connect the realm of nature with that of books, the realm of everyday experience with that of passionate reading in massive tomes, and the realm of codes of etiquette and institutions with that of extravagant and joyous erudition―efforts that this book itself brilliantly carries on.

368 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

Anthony Thomas Grafton is an American historian of early modern Europe and the Henry Putnam University Professor of History at Princeton University, where he is also the Director the Program in European Cultural Studies. He is also a corresponding fellow of the British Academy and a recipient of the Balzan Prize. From January 2011 to January 2012, he served as the President of the American Historical Association. From 2006 to 2020, Grafton was co-executive editor of the Journal of the History of Ideas.

Reviews

[Charlie]

Essays on scholars and scholarship in early modern Europe. Read about 1/3. Very thorough, penetrating, but narrowly focused. Will probably read more as other essays intersect with my interests.

For scholars only. Not suitable as an introduction to the topic.