Unrepentant Renaissance

From Petrarch to Shakespeare to Milton

Strier Richard

Who during the Renaissance could have dissented from the values of reason and restraint, patience and humility, rejection of the worldly and the physical? These widely articulated values were part of the inherited Christian tradition and were reinforced by key elements in the Renaissance, especially the revival of Stoicism and Platonism. This book is devoted to those who did dissent from them. Richard Strier reveals that many long-recognized major texts did question the most traditional values and uncovers a Renaissance far more bumptious and affirmative than much recent scholarship has allowed.

"The Unrepentant Renaissance" counters the prevalent view of the period as dominated by the regulation of bodies and passions, aiming to reclaim the Renaissance as an era happily churning with surprising, worldly, and self-assertive energies. Reviving the perspective of Jacob Burckhardt and Nietzsche, Strier provides fresh and uninhibited readings of texts by Petrarch, More, Shakespeare, Ignatius Loyola, Montaigne, Descartes, and Milton. Strier's lively argument will stir debate throughout the field of Renaissance studies.

Reviews

Center for Robert Penn Warren Studies: Warren-Brooks Award – Won

"Well articulated, intelligent, and written with the ease and confidence of a mature scholar, there is nothing in this book that isn't freshly thought through in an energetic and open way. Strier's close readings of the Renaissance literary texts are done with diligence and vigor. 'The Unrepentant Renaissance' offers a refreshing dissent from a dominant tendency in the field" – Gordon Braden, University of Virginia

"Richard Strier does a spirited and articulate job of bringing back the enthusiastic energies that Jacob Burckhardt taught us, very wisely, to observe in the Renaissance. While deftly responding to the potentially dour agendas associated with everything that Burckhardt left out – the Reformation, England, the New Historicism – Strier offers us a newly humane counter-Renaissance" – Leonard Barkan, Princeton University

"Refuting 'the standard moral perspective' reinforced by recent scholarship, Strier's 'The Unrepentant Renaissance' recaptures for its readers the more humane values of the period between Petrarch and Milton that time and again trump the rigors of righteousness and rationality. Its readings of an impressive range of iconic works, including epic, dramatic, and lyric poetry as well as prose, are unfailingly rewarding, often totally reorienting, and always refreshingly unrepentant" – Katherine Eden, Columbia University

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