The Palace of Secrets: Beroalde de Verville and Renaissance Conceptions of Knowledge (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780198158622)

During the Renaissance, different conceptions of knowledge were debated. Dominant among these was encyclopaedism, which treated knowledge as an ordered and unified circle of learning in which branches were logically related to each other. By contrast, writers like Montaigne saw human knowledge as an inherently unsystematic and subjective flux. This study explores the tension between these two views, examining the theories of knowledge, uses of genre, and the role of fiction in philosophical texts. Drawing on examples from sixteenth and seventeenth- century texts, and particularly focusing on the polymath B駻oalde de Verville, Kenny provides an in-depth study of the two competing conceptions of knowledge.

Author: Neil Kenny
ISBN-10: 0198158629
ISBN-13: 9780198158622
Publisher: Clarendon Press
Language: English
Published: 07/25/1991
Pages: 318
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.33lbs
Size: 8.80h x 5.86w x 1.00d