Knowledge, Discovery and Imagination in Early Modern Europe: The Rise of Aesthetic Rationalism

261 Pages·1997·6.97 MB·English

by  Timothy J. Reiss

Recent explanations of changes in early modern European thought speak much
of a move from orality and emphasis on language to print culture and a 'spatial'
way of thinking. Timothy J. Reiss offers a more complex explanation for the
massive changes that occurred. He describes how by the late fifteenth century
the language arts of the trivium had come to seem useful only for communi-
cation, teaching and public debate, and how humanists turned to the
mathematical arts of the quadrium - including music - to enable new means
and methods of discovery. Reiss goes on to argue that the new 'mathematical'
ideal formed the basis of wide sociocultural renewal; he analyzes Northern
vernacular grammars, examines the work of French and Italian mathemati-
cians, musicians and philosophers including Descartes, and censures such
modern commonplaces as the supposed impact of print and 'spatial' thinking.
He ends by exploring the broad impact of this 'mathematization' of the Western
imagination.

Cambridge Studies in Renaissance Literature and Culture 15
Knowledge, discovery and imagination in
early modern Europe
Cambridge Studies in Renaissance Literature and Culture 15
General editor
STEPHEN ORGEL
Jackson Eli Reynolds Professor of Humanities, Stanford University
Editorial board
Anne Barton, University of Cambridge
Jonathan Dollimore, University of Sussex
Marjorie Garber, Harvard University
Jonathan Goldberg, Duke University
Nancy Vickers, University of Southern California
The last twenty years have seen a broad and vital reinterpretation of the nature
of literary texts, a move away from formalism to a sense of literature as an
aspect of social, economic, political and cultural history. While the earliest New
Historicist work was criticized for a narrow and anecdotal view of history, it
also served as an important stimulus for post-structuralist, feminist, Marxist
and psychoanalytical work, which in turn has increasingly informed and redi-
rected it. Recent writing on the nature of representation, the historical
construction of gender and the concept of identity itself, on theatre as a polit-
ical and economic phenomenon and on the ideologies of art generally, reveals
the breadth of the field. Cambridge Studies in Renaissance Literature and
Culture is designed to offer historically oriented studies of Renaissance liter-
ature and theatre which make use of the insights afforded by theoretical
perspectives. The view of history envisioned is above all a view of our own
history, a reading of the Renaissance for and from our own time.
Recent titles include
Anxious masculinity in early modern England
MARK BREITENBERG
Seizures of the will in early modern English drama
FRANK WHIGHAM, University of Texas at Austin
The emergence of the English author: scripting the life of the poet in early
modern England
KEVIN PASK, Concordia University
The poetics of English nationhood, 1590-1612
CLAIRE McEACHERN, University of California, Los Angeles
Textual intercourse: collaboration, authorship, and sexualities in Renaissance
drama
JEFFREY MASTEN, Harvard University
A complete list of books in the series is given at the end of the volume.
Knowledge, discovery
and imagination in
early modern Europe
The rise of aesthetic rationalism
Timothy J. Reiss
New York University
CAMBRIDGE
UNIVERSITY PRESS
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sao Paulo, Delhi
Cambridge University Press
The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK
Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York
www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521582216
© Timothy J. Reiss 1997
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without the written
permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 1997
A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data
Reiss, Timothy J., 1942-
Knowledge, discovery, and imagination in early modern Europe:
the rise of aesthetic rationalism / Timothy J. Reiss.
p. cm. — (Cambridge studies in Renaissance literature and culture; 15)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0 521 58221 0 (hardback) - ISBN 0 521 58795 6 (paperback)
1. Language and culture - Europe - History - 16th century.
2. Europe - Intellectual life. 3. Renaissance. I. Title. II. Series
P35.5.E85R45 1997
940.2'32-dc20 96-24764 CIP
ISBN 978-0-521-58221-6 hardback
ISBN 978-0-521-58795-2 paperback
Transferred to digital printing 2008
For Matthew, Suzanna and Justin

Contents
Prologue and acknowledgements page xi
A note on the text xix
Introduction 1
Part 1 Problematizing the language arts
1 Grammarians' dreams 19
2 Grammarians' nightmares 45
Part 2 Passages
3 Rhetoric and politics 73
4 Method and knowledge 101
Part 3 Mathematics, music and rational aesthetics
5 Quadrivial pursuits 135
6 Bridging effects 155
7 Musical elaborations 169
8 Well-tempered imagining 188
Bibliography 201
Index 227