The 'Bazaar' of the title captures the essence of this challenge to
the received wisdom of what the European Renaissance was really
about. It was a time when Europe started to define itself by
emulating the wealth and cultures of the eastern empires, notably
the Ottomans, the Persians and the Egyptian Mameluks. The exchanges
in the bazaars of the east, the Arabic understanding of astronomy,
philosophy and medicine, and the impact of Eastern cultures on
mainland Europe in the 15th and 16th centuries call into question
the traditional, limited understanding of the Renaissance. Brotton
broadens the scope of the survey into one of global renaissance
with scholarly authority and a gift for focusing on the significant
image, whether a brilliant analysis of Holbein's Ambassadors,
Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors set in an exhilarating and
dangerous eastern marketplace, or a reading of the Bellini painting
of St Mark preaching in Alexandria, which 'dresses up the
contemporary world in the clothes of the past as a way of
understanding the present'. Brotton clarifies the darker legacy of
the Renaissance too - its use of art and architecture as 'power on
display', its polarization of religious positions, which resulted
in the persecution of Jewish communities, and the conflation of
'Turk and Protestant' in the Catholic Church condemnation of
'diabolical and heretical opinions', and then its arrogance in
dividing the entire world into two - half the globe belonging to
Charles V of Castile, and the other half to Portugal. Maps were
treated like the precious commodities to which they seemed to
promise access, as navigational information became a bargaining
counter. A timeline, a further reading list, a comprehensive index
and well-chosen and imaginative illustrations are valuable adjuncts
to the excellent text, all bringing some sense of order to the
sprawling splendour of this time of overwhelming change, when the
printing press, eastern banking practices, and ideas of humanism
harnessed to conflicting political powers shaped the Renaissance -
and also our modern-day world. (Kirkus UK)
The Renaissance range in changes at a breathtaking pace, changes
that shape the world to this day. Now Jerry Brotton deftly captures
this remarkable age, in a book that places Europe's great flowering
in a revealing global context.
It was Europe's contact with the outside world, Brotton argues,
especially with the rich and cultivated East, that made the
Renaissance what it was. Indeed, Europeans saw themselves through
the mirror of the East--it was during this age, for instance, that
they first spoke of themselves as "Europeans." Here is cultural
history of the best kind, as Brotton muses on the meanings of
Holbein's painting "The Ambassadors"--which is virtually a catalog
of the international influences on Europe--or on the Arabic
influence in the burgeoning sciences of astronomy and geography.
This global approach offers revealing new insights into such men as
Dante and Leonardo da Vinci and highlights the international
influences behind Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Along with fresh and
original discussions of well-known figures from Copernicus to Durer
to Shakespeare, Brotton offers a far-reaching exploration that
looks at paintings and technology, patterns of trade and the
printed page, as he illuminates the overarching themes that defined
the age.
From architecture to medicine, from humorists to explorers, the
teeming world of the Renaissance comes to life in this thoughtful,
insightful, and beautifully written book, which offers us a timely
perspective on the Renaissance as a moment of global inclusiveness
that still has much to teach us today."
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