|
Showing 1 - 25 of
213 matches in All Departments
Western Civilisation was in its pomp when Jacob Burckhardt
delivered his Judgements on History and Historians; European
Empires spanned the globe, while the modern age was being forged in
the nationalist revolutions of 1848. As a tutor to the young
Friedrich Nietzsche as well as one of the first historians to take
'culture' as his subject rather than the triumphs and travails of
kings and generals, Burckhardt was at the vanguard of this modern
sensibility. Ambitious in its scope, ranging from the days of
Ancient Egypt, through the Reformation to the time of Napoleon,
this is indeed a history of 'Western Civilization', written before
two monstrous world wars threw such a concept into disrepute.
Published in 1937: The author's work on the Renaissance in Italy is
too well known, not only to students of the period, but now a wider
circle of readers, for any introduction to be necessary.
Republished in 1949, Jacob Burckhardt's brilliant study, first
published in Germany in 1852, has survived all its critics and
presents today perhaps a more intelligible and a more valid picture
of events, their nexus, and their relevance than any later study.
This English version is apt to the moment. No epoch of remote
history can be so relevant to modern interests as the period of
transition between the ancient and the medieval world, when a
familiar order of things visibly died and was supplanted by a new.
Other transitions become apparent only in retrospect; that of the
age of Constantine, like our own, was patent to contemporaries. Old
institutions, in the sphere of culture as of government, had grown
senile; economic balances were altered; peoples hitherto on the
peripheries of civilization demanded attention, and a new and
revolutionary social doctrine with an enormous emotional appeal was
spread abroad by men with a religious zeal for a new and
authoritarian cosmopolitanism and with a religious certainty that
their end justified their means. For us, contemporary developments
have made the analogy inescapable, but Jacob Burckhardt's insight
led him to a singularly clear apprehension of the meaning of the
transition almost a century ago, and the analogy implicit in his
book is the more impressive as it was unpremeditated.
Published in 1937: The author's work on the Renaissance in Italy is
too well known, not only to students of the period, but now a wider
circle of readers, for any introduction to be necessary.
Republished in 1949, Jacob Burckhardt's brilliant study, first
published in Germany in 1852, has survived all its critics and
presents today perhaps a more intelligible and a more valid picture
of events, their nexus, and their relevance than any later study.
This English version is apt to the moment. No epoch of remote
history can be so relevant to modern interests as the period of
transition between the ancient and the medieval world, when a
familiar order of things visibly died and was supplanted by a new.
Other transitions become apparent only in retrospect; that of the
age of Constantine, like our own, was patent to contemporaries. Old
institutions, in the sphere of culture as of government, had grown
senile; economic balances were altered; peoples hitherto on the
peripheries of civilization demanded attention, and a new and
revolutionary social doctrine with an enormous emotional appeal was
spread abroad by men with a religious zeal for a new and
authoritarian cosmopolitanism and with a religious certainty that
their end justified their means. For us, contemporary developments
have made the analogy inescapable, but Jacob Burckhardt's insight
led him to a singularly clear apprehension of the meaning of the
transition almost a century ago, and the analogy implicit in his
book is the more impressive as it was unpremeditated.
For the first time in English, one of the greatest masterpieces of
historical writing: 'Every civilized library must have a copy.'
CHRISTOPHER STACE, Telegraph 'A wonderfully fat and vivid reminder
of the splendour and miseries of Hellenism...enlightened and
enlightening, a joy to read, delicious with anecdotes and a
manifest labour of love, candour and openmindedness.' FREDERIC
RAPHAEL, Sunday Times Jacob Burckhardt (1818-97) was one of the
greatest historians of classical and Renaissance art, architecture
and culture. Though he died over a hundred years ago, his superb
prose is as fresh and readable today as it was at the end of the
nineteenth century. The Greeks and Greek Civilization describes, in
glorious, elegant detail, the lives of the ancient Greeks and the
origins of their culture.The book has never appeared before in
English. Oswyn Murray, the book's editor, and his translator,
Sheila Stern, have been labouring for many years on the text and
now, finally, have ready an authoritative version which, in Oswyn
Murray's words, 'remains the best account of Greek civilization.'
'His changes in tone, the sudden plunge from the grandest to the
most minor themes, the zooming in and out from the broadest
panoramas to a particular carpet on a particular floor, the
massiveness of his project and the lightness with which he
accomplishes it, not to mention his vast knowledge, his clear
style, his precision and his general surefootedness, are what makes
Burckhardt great in a way that is not so different from the way
Shakespeare is great or Rembrandt or Beethoven. He created vast
spaces in history, heights and depths, enormous ranges of pitch and
timbre, sunny clearings in the midst of impenetrable gloom...Thanks
to the efforts of Oswyn Murray and Sheila Stern, a Great Blue Whale
is swimming for the first time in English waters. Tiddlers
everywhere should be pleased to accept the invitation to swim in
its posthumous wake.' JAMES DAVIDSON, London Review of Books
On several journeys to Italy in the mid-nineteenth century, the
Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt (1818-97) saw in the figures and
events of the Italian Renaissance certain traits that he believed
to be mirrored in the politics of his own day, notably some aspects
of 'an unbridled egoism, outraging every right, and killing every
germ of a healthier culture'. Revolutionary in his all-encompassing
and unflinching examination of the Italian Renaissance, Burckhardt
saw developments in statecraft and war as giving rise to the more
publicised artistic progress of the era. First published in 1860,
this work is considered to be his magnum opus on the subject, and
is here reissued in the accessible two-volume English translation
of 1878 by S. G. C. Middlemore. In Volume 1, Burckhardt considers
three key themes: the state as a work of art, the development of
the individual, and the revival of antiquity in education and
philosophy.
On several journeys to Italy in the mid-nineteenth century, the
Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt (1818-97) saw in the figures and
events of the Italian Renaissance certain traits that he believed
to be mirrored in the politics of his own day, notably some aspects
of 'an unbridled egoism, outraging every right, and killing every
germ of a healthier culture'. Revolutionary in his all-encompassing
and unflinching examination of the Italian Renaissance, Burckhardt
saw developments in statecraft and war as giving rise to the more
publicised artistic progress of the era. First published in 1860,
this work is considered to be his magnum opus on the subject, and
is here reissued in the accessible two-volume English translation
of 1878 by S. G. C. Middlemore. In Volume 2, Burckhardt considers
three key themes: scientific discoveries concerning the world and
the cosmos, changes in society and festivals, and developments in
the fields of morality and religion.
Western Civilisation was in its pomp when Jacob Burckhardt
delivered his Judgements on History and Historians; European
Empires spanned the globe, while the modern age was being forged in
the nationalist revolutions of 1848. As a tutor to the young
Friedrich Nietzsche as well as one of the first historians to take
'culture' as his subject rather than the triumphs and travails of
kings and generals, Burckhardt was at the vanguard of this modern
sensibility. Ambitious in its scope, ranging from the days of
Ancient Egypt, through the Reformation to the time of Napoleon,
this is indeed a history of 'Western Civilization', written before
two monstrous world wars threw such a concept into disrepute.
|
Der Cicerone (Hardcover)
Jacob Burckhardt
|
R1,755
R1,650
Discovery Miles 16 500
Save R105 (6%)
|
Ships in 10 - 15 working days
|
|
You may like...
Loot
Nadine Gordimer
Paperback
(2)
R398
R330
Discovery Miles 3 300
|