Worlds of Knowledge and the Classical Tradition in the Early Modern Age : Comparative Approaches

Recent research has established the continued importance of engagement with the classical tradition to the formation of scholarly, philosophical, theological, and scientific knowledge well into the eighteenth century. The Worlds of Knowledge and the Classical Tradition in the Early Modern Age is the first attempt to adopt a comparative approach to this phenomenon. An international team of scholars explores the differences and similarities – across time and place – in how the study and use of ancient texts and ideas shaped a wide range of fields: nascent classics, sexuality, chronology, metrology, the study of the soul, medicine, the history of Judaeo-Christian interaction, and biblical criticism. By adopting a comparative approach, this volume brings out some of the most important factors in explaining the contours of early modern intellectual life.

Contributors: Karen Hollewand, Dmitri Levitin, Jan Machielsen, Ian Maclean, C. Philipp E. Nothaft, Cesare Pastorino, Michelle Pfeffer, Jetze Touber, Timothy Twining, and Floris Verhaart.

Dmitri Levitin is a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. He works on the history of pre-modern knowledge; his most recent monograph is entitled The Kingdom of Darkness (Cambridge, 2021).

Ian Maclean is an Emeritus Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, and an honorary Professor of the University of St Andrews. He works on the intellectual traditions of the higher disciplines, and on book history. His most recent monograph is Episodes in the Life of the Early Modern Learned Book (Brill, 2020).