Written by an eminent authority on the Renaissance, these classic essays deal not only with Paul Kristeller's specialty, Renaissance humanism and philosophy, but also with Renaissance theories of art. The focus of the collection is on topics such as humanist learning, humanist moral thought, the diffusion of humanism, Platonism, music and learning during the early Renaissance, and the modern system of arts in relation to the Renaissance. For this volume the author has written a new preface, a new essay, and an afterword.

"[This book] includes some of Professor Kristeller's most celebrated essays. . . . no student of the Renaissance can afford not to have read these--the most perfect--introductions to Renaissance thought. . . . One of the main merits of the present book is that it contributes to the survival of truly great scholarship. The elegant and erudite essays contained in it should serve as models for every historian of ideas". --The Heythrop Journal "[These] papers . . . illuminate various aspects of Renaissance thought through the impressive mediums of a copious and detailed knowledge of original materials, a seemingly limitless comprehension of the whole subject, a clear, clean style, and a wise, learned, and scholarly mind".--The Personalist

Contents:
Humanism: Humanist learning in the Italian Renaissance -- The moral thought of Renaissance humanism -- The European diffusion of Italian humanism
Platonism and Aristotelianism: The Platonic Academy of Florence -- Ficino and Pomponazzi on the place of man in the universe -- Paduan Averroism and Alexandrism in the light of recent studies
The Arts: The origin and development of the language of Italian prose -- Music and learning in the early Italian Renaissance -- The modern system of the arts -- Rhetoric in Medieval and Renaissance Culture -- Afterword: “Creativity” and “Tradition”