Giordano Bruno: Philosopher/Heretic

Author:   Ingrid D. Rowland
Publisher:   Hill & Wang Inc.,U.S.
ISBN:  

9780809095247


Pages:   400
Publication Date:   19 August 2008
Format:   Hardback
Availability:   Awaiting stock   Availability explained


Our Price $71.28 Quantity:  
Add to Cart

Share |

Giordano Bruno: Philosopher/Heretic


Add your own review!

Overview

"Giordano Bruno is one of the great figures of early modern Europe, and one of the least understood. Ingrid D. Rowland's path breaking life of Bruno establishes him once and for all as a peer of Erasmus, Shakespeare, and Galileo, a thinker whose vision of the world prefigures ours.By the time Bruno was burned at the stake as a heretic in 1600 on Rome's Campo dei Fiori, he had taught in Naples, Rome, Venice, Geneva, France, England, Germany, and the ""magic Prague"" of Emperor Rudolph II. His powers of memory and his provocative ideas about the infinity of the universe had attracted the attention of the pope, Queen Elizabeth - and the Inquisition, which condemned him to death in Rome as part of a yearlong jubilee.Writing with great verve and sympathy for her protagonist, Rowland traces Bruno's wanderings through a sixteenth-century Europe where every certainty of religion and philosophy had been called into question and shows him valiantly defending his ideas (and his right to maintain them) to the very end. An incisive, independent thinker just when natural philosophy was transformed into modern science, he was also a writer of sublime talent. His eloquence and his courage inspired thinkers across Europe, finding expression in the work of Shakespeare and Galileo.""Giordano Bruno"" allows us to encounter a legendary European figure as if for the first time."

Full Product Details

Author:   Ingrid D. Rowland
Publisher:   Hill & Wang Inc.,U.S.
Imprint:   Hill & Wang Inc.,U.S.
Dimensions:   Width: 15.20cm , Height: 2.90cm , Length: 22.90cm
Weight:   0.572kg
ISBN:  

9780809095247


ISBN 10:   0809095246
Pages:   400
Publication Date:   19 August 2008
Audience:   General/trade ,  General
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Out of Stock Indefinitely
Availability:   Awaiting stock   Availability explained

Table of Contents

Reviews

Intelligent biography of the renegade Italian friar burned at the stake in 1600 for his prodigious writings prefiguring modern science.Rowland (The Scarith of Scornello: A Tale of Renaissance Forgery, 2004, etc.) leavens her vast scholarly knowledge of Renaissance church history with a sprightly stylistic touch. Born in 1548 in a small city east of Naples, Bruno journeyed from the convent of San Domenico Maggiore through the exalted universities of Europe and England to test and deepen his theories of natural philosophy, with the Inquisition nipping at his heels all the while. From his first years as a Dominican friar, he entertained doubts about the personhood of Jesus, and his lack of reverence for the Catholic icons raised suspicions of Protestant leanings at a time when the Church was riven by the Reformation. Steeped in Aquinas, Aristotle and Plato, Bruno was also strongly influenced by the emotional rhetoric of Teofilo da Vairano and the Platonic philosophy of Marsilio Ficino, among others, and he delved into the Hebrew Kabbalah. Pursued by Venetian inquisitors for irreverence and harboring banned books, the exiled and excommunicated friar moved from Genoa to Geneva, Lyon to Paris, London to the Protestant German cities, teaching artificial memory, astrology, theology and mathematics, honing his philosophy. Finally, he discovered the work of German cardinal Nicolaus Cusanus, who proposed the idea that the universe might be infinitely large. In Bruno's poetic, atomic system, set out in On the Immense, he touched on the concept of infinite space and time, a universal divine fertility in which God was present everywhere. Returning to Venice in 1591, he was eventually denounced by his employer and spent eight years in prison while the Inquisition debated what to do with him. When he was condemned to death, he replied menacingly, You may be more afraid to bring that sentence against me than I am to accept it. Dense and elegantly erudite - a skillful, accessible analysis of complex systems of religion, philosophy and literature. (Kirkus Reviews)


Author Information

"Ingrid D. Rowland was previously a professor at the University of Chicago. She is a regular essayist for ""The New York Review of Books ""and ""The New Republic."" She is the author of ""The Culture of the High Renaissance ""and ""The Scorith of Scornello."" She lives in Rome."

Tab Content 6

Author Website:  

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

No review item found!

Add your own review!

Countries Available

All regions
Latest Reading Guide

ls

Shopping Cart
Your cart is empty
Shopping cart
Mailing List