Inventing the Renaissance: The Myth of a Golden Age (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780226837970)

An irreverent new take on the Renaissance, which reveals it as anything but Europe's golden age.

From the darkness of a plagued and war-torn Middle Ages, the Renaissance (we're told) heralds the dawning of a new world--a halcyon age of art, prosperity, and rebirth. Hogwash! or so says award-winning novelist and historian Ada Palmer. In Inventing the Renaissance, Palmer turns her witty and irreverent eye on the fantasies we've told ourselves about Europe's not-so-golden age, myths she sets right with sharp clarity.

Palmer's Renaissance is altogether desperate. Troubled by centuries of conflict, she argues, Europe looked to a long-lost Roman empire (even its education practices) to save them from unending war. Later historians met their own political challenges with a similar nostalgic vision, only now they looked to the Renaissance and told a partial story. To right this wrong, Palmer offers fifteen provocative portraits of Renaissance men and women (some famous, some obscure) whose lives reveal a far more diverse, fragile, and wild Renaissance than its golden reputation suggests.

Author: Ada Palmer
ISBN-10: 0226837971
ISBN-13: 9780226837970
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Language: English
Published: 03/10/2025
Pages: 768
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.00lbs