Doubting the Divine in Early Modern Europe

Erscheinungsjahr 2022
ISBN: 978-1-108-47027-8
Verlag: Cambridge University Press

Buch, Englisch, 280 Seiten, Format (B × H): 157 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 615 g

In this book, George McClure examines the intellectual tradition of challenges to religious and literary authority in the early modern era. He explores the hidden history of unbelief through the lens of Momus, the Greek god of criticism and mockery. Surveying his revival in Italy, France, Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, and England, McClure shows how Momus became a code for religious doubt in an age when such writings remained dangerous for authors. Momus ('Blame') emerged as a persistent and subversive critic of divine governance and, at times, divinity itself. As an emblem or as an epithet for agnosticism or atheism, he was invoked by writers such as Leon Battista Alberti, Anton Francesco Doni, Giordano Bruno, Luther, and possibly, in veiled form, by Milton in his depiction of Lucifer. The critic of gods also acted, in sometimes related fashion, as a critic of texts, leading the army of Moderns in Swift's Battle of the Books, and offering a heretical archetype for the literary critic.

Autoren/Hrsg.

McClure, George

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtswissenschaft Allgemein
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Mentalitäts- und Sozialgeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturgeschichte und Literaturkritik
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Kultur- und Ideengeschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1. The classical tradition; 2. Renaissance Antihero: Leon Battista Alberti's Momus, the novel; 3. Momus and the reformation; 4. The execution of Giordano Bruno; 5. Milton's Lucifer; 6. God of Modern critics; 7. Conclusion: Momus and modernism.

Über Autor(innen)

McClure, George
George McClure is Professor of History at the University of Alabama, where he has taught since 1986. He is the author of Sorrow and Consolation in Italian Humanism (2016), which won the Marraro Prize of the Society for Italian Historical Studies and The Culture of Profession in Late Renaissance Italy (2004).