Yale Intellectual History of the West

 Colish, Bouwsma and Burrows manage to compress much of value in these initial volumes that promise to be a major revamping of the general outlines of intellectual history in the west. Moving away from the older and slightly discredited History of ideas approach these volumes have so far delivered first-rate summary accounts of intellectual fashions and trends as well as instancing fresh vistas and innovative integrations of recent scholarship. They will hardly create a new consensus but they will prod general readers to reconsider the deeper contexts of contemporary issues.

 Medieval Foundations of the Western Intellectual Tradition 400-1400 by Marcia L. Colish (Yale Intellectual History of the West; Yale University Press) This magisterial book provides an analysis of the course of Western intellectual history between A.D. 400 and 1400. The book is arranged in two parts: the first surveys the comparative modes of thought and varying success of Byzantine, Latin-Christian, and Muslim cultures, and the second takes the reader from the twelfth-century revival of learning to the high Middle Ages and beyond, the period in which the vibrancy of Western intellectual culture enabled it to stamp its imprint well beyond the frontiers of Christendom.

An analysis of the course of Western intellectual history between A.D. 400 and 1400, this book is divided into two parts: the first surveys the comparative modes of thought and varying success of Byzantine, Latin-Christian and Muslim cultures, and the second takes readers from the 11th century revival of learning to the high Middle Ages and beyond, the period in which the vibrancy of Western intellectual culture enabled it to stamp its imprint well beyond the frontiers of Christendom. 24 illustrations.

 Contents:

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
PART I FROM ROMAN CHRISTIANITY TO THE LATIN
CHRISTIAN CULTURE OF THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES
1 From Apology to the Constantinian Establishment
2 The Latin Church Fathers, I: Ambrose and Jerome
3 The Latin Church Fathers, II: Augustine and Gregory the Great
4 Hanging by a Thread: The Transmitters and
Monasticism
5 Europe's New Schoolmasters: Franks, Celts, and Anglo-Saxons
6 The Carolingian Renaissance
PART II VERNACULAR CULTURE
7 Celtic and Old French Literature
8 Varieties of Germanic Literature: Old Norse, Old High German, and Old English
PART III EARLY MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATIONS COMPARED
9 Imperial Culture: Byzantium
10 Peoples of the Book: Muslim and Jewish Thought
11 Western European Thought in the Tenth and
Eleventh Centuries
PART IV LATIN AND VERNACULAR LITERATURE
12 The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century
13 Courtly Love Literature
14 Goliardic Poetry, Fabliaux, Satire, and
Drama
15 Later Medieval Literature
PART V MYSTICISM, DEVOTION AND HERESY
16 Cistercians and Victorines
17 Franciscans, Dominicans, and Later
Medieval Mystics
18 Heresy in the Twelfth and Thirteenth
Centuries
19 The Christian Commonwealth Reconfigured: Wycliff and Huss
PART VI HIGH AND LATE MEDIEVAL SPECULATIVE THOUGHT
20 Scholasticism and the Rise of Universities
21 The Twelfth Century: The Logica
Modernorum and Systematic Theology
22 The Thirteenth Century: Modism and
Terminism, Latin Averroism, Bonaventure, and Thomas Aquinas
23 Later Medieval Scholasticism: The Triumph
of Terminism, Henry of Ghent, John Duns Scotus, and William of Ockham
PART VII THE LEGACY OF SCHOLASTICISM
24 The Natural Sciences: Reception and
Criticism
25 Economic Theory: Poverty, the Just Price, and Usury
26 Political Theory: Regnum and Sacerdotum,
Conciliarism, and Feudal Monarchy
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliographical Note
Index

The Waning of the Renaissance, 1550-1640 by William J. Bouwsma (Yale Intellectual History of the West; Yale University Press) Historians have conventionally viewed intellectual and artistic achievement as a seamless progression in a single direction, with the Renaissance, as identified by Jacob Burckhardt, as the root and foundation of modern culture. But in this brilliant new analysis William Bouwsma rethinks the accepted view, arguing that while the Renaissance had a beginning and, unquestionably, a climax, it also had an ending. Examining the careers of some of the greatest figures of the age--Montaigne, Galileo, Jonson, Descartes, Hooker, Shakespeare, and Cervantes among many others- Bouwsma perceives in their work a growing sense of doubt and anxiety about the modern world. He considers first those features of modern European culture generally associated with the traditional Renaissance, features which reached their climax in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. But even as the movements of the Renaissance gathered strength, simultaneous impulses operated in a contrary direction. Bouwsma identifies a growing concern with personal identity, shifts in the interests of major thinkers, a decline in confidence about the future, and a heightening of anxiety. Exploring the fluctuating and sometimes contradictory atmosphere in which Renaissance artists and thinkers operated, Bouwsma shows how the very liberation from old boundaries and modes of expression that characterized the Renaissance became itself increasingly stifling and destructive. By drawing attention to the waning of the Renaissance culture of freedom and creativity, Bouwsma offers a wholly new and intriguing interpretation of the place of the European Renaissance in modern culture.
William J. Bouwsma was Sather Professor of History at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of Venice and the Defense of Republican Liberty, John Calvin, and A Usable Past, among other books. 

The Crisis of Reason: European Thought, 1848-1914 by J. W. Burrow (Yale Intellectual History of the West; Yale University Press) This elegantly written book explores the history of ideas in Europe from the revolutions of 1848 to the beginning of the First World War. Broader than a straight survey, deeper and richer than a textbook, The Crisis of Reason: European Thought seeks to place the reader in the position of an informed eavesdropper on the intellectual conversations of the past. Burrow first outlines the intellectual context of the mid-nineteenth century, using ideas taken from physics, social evolution, and social Darwinism, and anxieties about modernity and personal identity, to explore the impact of science and social thought on European intellectual life. The discussion encompasses powerful and fashionable concepts in evolution, art, myth, the occult, and the unconscious mind; the rise of the great cities of Berlin, Paris, and London; and the work of literary writers, philosophers, and composers. Most of the great intellectual figures of the age-and many of the lesser known-populate the book, among them Mill, Bakunin, Nietzsche, Bergson, Renan, Pater, Proust, Clough, Flaubert, Wagner, and Wilde. The author wears his erudition lightly, and this distinguished book will be both entertaining and accessible to scholars, students, and general readers alike.

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