Memorial Hall Library

Know thyself, Western identity from classical Greece to the Renaissance, Ingrid Rossellini

eng

Includes bibliographical references (pages 433-448) and index

illustrations

index present

non fiction

Know thyself

bibliography

995089075

Ingrid Rossellini

Western identity from classical Greece to the Renaissance

Introduces the origins of self-understanding in the cultures of Ancient Greece, the Roman Empire, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance, and explains how Western civilization frames the issues of self and society

Part one. Ancient Greece. The Birth of the polis -- Sparta and Athens -- Reason, the irrational, and the danger of hubris -- Hesiod and the cosmic origin of the world -- The heroic ideal -- Greek art : reason versus passion -- From mythology to philosophy -- Pythagoras : the divine reason and the immortal soul -- The myth of the rational west versus the irrational east -- Splendor and contradiction of the classical age -- The achievements of theatre, rhetoric, and philosophy -- From Plato to Aristotle : the empowering wisdom of philosophy -- The Hellenistic era -- Part two. Ancient Rome. The Roman Republic : history and myth -- Augustus and the empire : the theatre of politics and power -- Augustus's successors -- The decline of the empire and the rise of Christianity -- Augustine's tale of two cities -- Part three. The early Middle Ages. The triumph of Christianity and the demise of the rational mind -- The symbolic discourse of art -- The new vocabulary of faith and spirituality -- Latin West versus Greek East -- The monastic experience -- From the iconoclastic revolt to the splendor of Byzantine art -- Charlemagne and feudalism -- Part four. The later Middle Ages. Church authority versus state authority : a difficult balance of power -- Cities and universities : the dawn of a new cultural era -- A new art for a new sensibility -- The crusades -- Wealth and power versus poverty and humility : the two faces of Christianity -- The rehabilitation of man within the ordered universe of God -- The gradual secularization of culture -- Dante's summa : the Divine Comedy -- Part five. Humanism and the Renaissance. The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries : the historical context -- The Italian city-states -- Petrarch's literary humanism -- Political humanism -- Florence : the city of splendor -- Lorenzo the Magnificent and his court -- The gathering clouds of disenchantment and cynicism -- The Roman Renaissance : glory and ambiguity -- The Protestant Reformation and the sack of Rome -- The last judgment -- Conclusion