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

A new explanation for the substantial changes of thought that occurred in early modern Europe.

Timothy J. Reiss (Author)

9780521587952, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 13 March 1997

264 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.5 cm, 0.39 kg

"[Reiss's] study signals rich historical connections yet to be explored." Gary Tomlinson, American Historical Review

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 communication, teaching and public debate, and how humanists turned to the mathematical arts of the quadrivium - 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 analyses Northern vernacular grammars, examines the work of French and Italian mathematicians, 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 'mathematisation' of the Western imagination.

Introduction
Part I. Problematising the Language Arts: 1. Grammarians' dreams
2. Grammarians' nightmares
Part II. Passages: 3. Rhetoric and politics
4. Method and knowledge
Part III. Mathematics, Music, and Rational Aesthetics: 5. Quadrivial pursuits
6. Bridging effects
7. Musical elaborations
8. Well-tempered imagining
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: c 1500 to c 1800 [DSBD]