Philosophy

Erasmus, Man of Letters: The Construction of Charisma in Print - Updated Edition

    Preface by
  • Lisa Jardine

Paperback

Price:
$22.95/£18.99
ISBN:
Published:
Jun 23, 2015
2015
Pages:
304
Size:
6 x 9.25 in.
Illus:
28 halftones.
Buy This

The name Erasmus of Rotterdam conjures up a golden age of scholarly integrity and the disinterested pursuit of knowledge, when learning could command public admiration without the need for authorial self-promotion. Lisa Jardine, however, shows that Erasmus self-consciously created his own reputation as the central figure of the European intellectual world. Erasmus himself—the historical as opposed to the figural individual—was a brilliant, maverick innovator, who achieved little formal academic recognition in his own lifetime. What Jardine offers here is not only a fascinating study of Erasmus but also a bold account of a key moment in Western history, a time when it first became possible to believe in the existence of something that could be designated “European thought.”