Doubt and Skepticism in Antiquity and the Renaissance

An interdisciplinary study of the forms and uses of uncertainty in important works of literature and philosophy in antiquity and the Renaissance.

Michelle Zerba (Author)

9781107024656, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 9 July 2012

272 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.9 cm, 0.57 kg

'Who should read this book? Everyone who loves the great books and finds skepticism appealing; everyone thrilled by the ambition of an argument spanning two millennia but anchored in the rhetoric of key passages; and everyone eager to persuade conservatives, who brandish these texts as their own in the culture wars, that 'there was never a time before interpretation when certainty prevailed'.' Anita Gilman Sherman, Renaissance Quarterly

This book is an interdisciplinary study of the forms and uses of doubt in works by Homer, Sophocles, Aristophanes, Cicero, Machiavelli, Shakespeare and Montaigne. Based on close analysis of literary and philosophical texts by these important authors, Michelle Zerba argues that doubt is a defining experience in antiquity and the Renaissance, one that constantly challenges the limits of thought and representation. The wide-ranging discussion considers issues that run the gamut from tragic loss to comic bombast, from psychological collapse to skeptical dexterity and from solitary reflection to political improvisation in civic contexts and puts Greek and Roman treatments of doubt into dialogue not only with sixteenth-century texts but with contemporary works as well. Using the past to engage questions of vital concern to our time, Zerba demonstrates that although doubt sometimes has destructive consequences, it can also be conducive to tolerance, discovery and conversation across sociopolitical boundaries.

Introduction
Part I. 'Farewell the Tranquil Mind': Tragic Doubt in Homer's Iliad, Sophocles' Philoctetes, and Shakespeare's Othello: 1. Achilles' doubt and the construction of a heroism-at-one-remove in Homer's Iliad
2. Moral doubt and the contradictory claims of pity in Sophocles' Philoctetes
3. 'Do as if for surety': doubt and delusions of certainty in Shakespeare's Othello
Part II. Comic Skepticism and Polytropic Strategies in Homer's Odyssey, Aristophanes' Women of the Thesmophoria, and Shakespeare's As You Like It: 4. Wandering Odysseus, pyrrhonist Penelope, and the return from alienation in Homer's Odyssey
5. Parody, androgyny, and skeptical inversions of gender and genre in Aristophanes' Women of the Thesmophoria and Shakespeare's As You Like It
Part III. Skepticism, Politics, and Rhetoric in the Works of Cicero, Machiavelli, and Montaigne: 6. Skeptical constructions of identity in Roman and Renaissance humanism
7. Academic skepticism and Cicero's republican politics
8. A Ciceronian Machiavelli
9. Montaigne's pyrrhonist politics.

Subject Areas: History of ideas [JFCX], Western philosophy: Medieval & Renaissance, c 500 to c 1600 [HPCB], Western philosophy: Ancient, to c 500 [HPCA], History of Western philosophy [HPC], Literature: history & criticism [DS]