From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life 1500 to the Present

Jacques Barzun0060928832, 9780060928834

Книга From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life 1500 to the… From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life 1500 to the Present Книги Исторические Автор: Jacques Barzun Год издания: 2001 Формат: pdf Издат.:Harper Perennial Страниц: 912 Размер: 20 ISBN: 0060928832 Язык: Английский0 (голосов: 0) Оценка:Highly regarded here and abroad for some thirty works of cultural history and criticism, master historian Jacques Barzun has now set down in one continuous narrative the sum of his discoveries and conclusions about the whole of Western culture since 1500.In this account, Barzun describes what Western Man wrought from the Renaissance and Reformation down to the present in the double light of its own time and our pressing concerns. He introduces characters and incidents with his unusual literary style and grace, bringing to the fore those that have “Puritans as Democrats,” “The Monarch’s Revolution,” “The Artist Prophet and Jester” – show the recurrent role of great themes throughout the eras. The triumphs and defeats of five hundred years form an inspiring saga that modifies the current impression of one long tale of oppression by white European males. Women and their deeds are prominent, and freedom (even in sexual matters) is not an invention of the last decades. And when Barzun rates the present not as a culmination but a decline, he is in no way a prophet of doom. Instead, he shows decadence as the creative novelty that will burst forth – tomorrow or the next day.Only after a lifetime of separate studies covering a broad territory could a writer create with such ease the synthesis displayed in this magnificent volume.

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Table of contents :
Cover……Page 1
Copyright page……Page 8
Table of Contents……Page 11
Author’s Note……Page 13
Prologue: From Current Concerns to the Subject of This Book……Page 17
Part I: From Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses to Boyle’s “Invisible College”……Page 23
The West Torn Apart……Page 25
Erasmus……Page 33
Luther……Page 38
The New Life……Page 43
Calvin……Page 56
The Good Letters……Page 65
Petrarch……Page 70
Marsilio Ficino……Page 79
The “Artist” Is Born……Page 87
A Digression on a Word: man……Page 104
Cross Section: The View from Madrid Around 1540……Page 113
Charles V……Page 114
The Eutopians……Page 139
Rabelais……Page 150
Montaigne……Page 155
Shakespeare……Page 162
Epic & Comic, Lyric & Music, Critic & Public……Page 167
Tasso……Page 170
Cross Section: The View from Venice Around 1650……Page 191
John Amos Comenius (Jan Komensky)……Page 202
The Invisible College……Page 213
Giordano Bruno……Page 216
Paracelsus……Page 219
Descartes……Page 222
Bacon……Page 225
Christina of Sweden……Page 229
Pascal……Page 236
Digression on a Word: esprit……Page 242
Robert Burton……Page 243
An Interlude……Page 246
Christine De Pisan……Page 254
Part II: From the Bog and Sand of Versailles to the Tennis Court……Page 259
The Monarchs’ Revolution……Page 261
Machiavelli……Page 277
Puritans As Democrats……Page 283
John Lilburne……Page 290
Oliver Cromwell……Page 296
Joseph Glanvill……Page 303
The Reign of Etiquette……Page 307
Fénelon……Page 320
Cross Section: The View from London Around 1715……Page 329
Vauban……Page 335
John Law……Page 342
Swift……Page 345
The Opulent Eye……Page 355
Peter Paul Rubens……Page 356
Molière……Page 366
Saint-Evremond……Page 369
The Encyclopedic Century……Page 381
Diderot……Page 391
Jean-Jacques Rousseau……Page 404
Johann Sebastian Bach……Page 410
Cross Section: The View from Weimar Around 1790……Page 415
Goethe……Page 416
Beaumarchais……Page 421
Le Chevalier Gluck……Page 437
Mozart……Page 440
The Forgotten Troop……Page 447
Thomas Beddoes……Page 459
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg……Page 461
With the Brain Trust in Egypt……Page 464
Germaine De Staël……Page 472
Part III: from Faust, Part I, to “Nude Descending a Staircase No. 2″……Page 485
The Work of Mind-And-Heart……Page 487
Digression on a Word: romantic……Page 489
Byron……Page 507
Cross Section: The View from Paris Around 1830……Page 513
Berlioz……Page 516
Hazlitt……Page 532
Shakespeare……Page 538
The Mother of Parliaments……Page 541
Sydney Smith……Page 551
Things Ride Mankind……Page 573
Florence Nightingale……Page 602
Walter Bagehot……Page 603
The Women Travelers……Page 605
Oliver Wendell Holmes……Page 607
Cross Section: The View from Chicago Around 1895……Page 613
A Summit Of Energies……Page 637
Samuel Butler……Page 655
The Cubist Decade……Page 665
Digression on a Word: pragmatism……Page 688
Part IV: From “The Great Illusion” to “Western Civ Has Got to Go”……Page 703
The Great Illusion……Page 705
Shaw……Page 707
The Artist Prophet and Jester……Page 735
Dorothy Sayers……Page 763
Embracing the Absurd……Page 767
James Agate……Page 775
Demotic Life and Times……Page 795
Let Us End with a Prologue……Page 820
Our Age……Page 821
Prologue……Page 825
The Good Letters……Page 826
The Artist Is Born……Page 827
Cross Section: The View from Madrid……Page 828
Epic & Comic Lyric & Music Critic & Public……Page 829
The Invisible College……Page 830
Monarchs’ Revolution……Page 831
Puritans As Democrats……Page 832
Cross Section: The View from London……Page 833
Opulent Eye……Page 835
Encyclopedic Century……Page 836
Cross Section: The View from Weimar……Page 837
Forgotten Troop……Page 838
The Work of Mind-And-Heart……Page 839
Cross Section: The View from Paris……Page 840
Things Ride Mankind……Page 841
Cross Section: The View from Chicago……Page 843
Summit of Energies……Page 844
Cubist Decade……Page 845
Great Illusion……Page 846
Artist Prophet and Jester……Page 847
Demotic Life and Times……Page 848
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