Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Manuscripts and manuscript culture
- 2 The troubadours: the Occitan model
- 3 The chanson de geste
- 4 Saints' lives, violence, and community
- 5 Myth and the matière de Bretagne
- 6 Sexuality, shame, and the genesis of romance
- 7 Medieval lyric: the trouvères
- 8 The Grail
- 9 Women authors of the Middle Ages
- 10 Crusades and identity
- 11 Rhetoric and historiography: Villehardouin's La Conquête de Constantinople
- 12 Humour and the obscene
- 13 Travel and orientalism
- 14 Allegory and interpretation
- 15 History and fiction: the narrativity and historiography of the matter of Troy
- 16 Mysticism
- 17 Prose romance
- 18 Rhetoric and theatre
- 19 The rise of metafiction in the late Middle Ages
- 20 What does ‘Renaissance’ mean?
- 21 Sixteenth-century religious writing
- 22 Sixteenth-century poetry
- 23 Sixteenth-century theatre
- 24 Women writers in the sixteenth century
- 25 Sixteenth-century prose narrative
- 26 Sixteenth-century thought
- 27 Sixteenth-century travel writing
- 28 Sixteenth-century margins
- 29 Tragedy: early to mid seventeenth century
- 30 Tragedy: mid to late seventeenth century
- 31 Seventeenth-century comedy
- 32 Seventeenth-century poetry
- 33 Seventeenth-century philosophy
- 34 Seventeenth-century women writers
- 35 Moraliste writing in the seventeenth century
- 36 Seventeenth-century prose narrative
- 37 Seventeenth-century religious writing
- 38 Seventeenth-century margins
- 39 What is Enlightenment?
- 40 The eighteenth-century novel
- 41 The eighteenth-century conte
- 42 Eighteenth-century comic theatre
- 43 Eighteenth-century theatrical tragedy
- 44 Eighteenth-century women writers
- 45 Eighteenth-century philosophy
- 46 Libertinage
- 47 Eighteenth-century travel
- 48 Eighteenth-century margins
- 49 The roman personnel
- 50 Romanticism: art, literature, and history
- 51 Realism
- 52 French poetry, 1793–1863
- 53 Symbolism
- 54 Madness and writing
- 55 Literature and the city in the nineteenth century
- 56 Nineteenth-century travel writing
- 57 Philosophy and ideology in nineteenth-century France
- 58 Naturalism
- 59 Impressionism: art, literature, and history, 1870–1914
- 60 Decadence
- 61 Avant-garde: text and image
- 62 Autobiography
- 63 The modern French novel
- 64 The contemporary French novel
- 65 Existentialism
- 66 Modern French thought
- 67 French drama in the twentieth century
- 68 Twentieth-century poetry
- 69 Francophone writing
- 70 Writing and postcolonial theory
- 71 Travel writing, 1914–2010
- 72 French cinema, 1895–2010
- 73 Writing, memory, and history
- 74 Holocaust writing and film
- 75 Women writers, artists, and filmmakers
- 76 French popular culture and the case of bande dessinée
- 77 Literature, film, and new media
- Select bibliography
- Index
26 - Sixteenth-century thought
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 May 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Manuscripts and manuscript culture
- 2 The troubadours: the Occitan model
- 3 The chanson de geste
- 4 Saints' lives, violence, and community
- 5 Myth and the matière de Bretagne
- 6 Sexuality, shame, and the genesis of romance
- 7 Medieval lyric: the trouvères
- 8 The Grail
- 9 Women authors of the Middle Ages
- 10 Crusades and identity
- 11 Rhetoric and historiography: Villehardouin's La Conquête de Constantinople
- 12 Humour and the obscene
- 13 Travel and orientalism
- 14 Allegory and interpretation
- 15 History and fiction: the narrativity and historiography of the matter of Troy
- 16 Mysticism
- 17 Prose romance
- 18 Rhetoric and theatre
- 19 The rise of metafiction in the late Middle Ages
- 20 What does ‘Renaissance’ mean?
- 21 Sixteenth-century religious writing
- 22 Sixteenth-century poetry
- 23 Sixteenth-century theatre
- 24 Women writers in the sixteenth century
- 25 Sixteenth-century prose narrative
- 26 Sixteenth-century thought
- 27 Sixteenth-century travel writing
- 28 Sixteenth-century margins
- 29 Tragedy: early to mid seventeenth century
- 30 Tragedy: mid to late seventeenth century
- 31 Seventeenth-century comedy
- 32 Seventeenth-century poetry
- 33 Seventeenth-century philosophy
- 34 Seventeenth-century women writers
- 35 Moraliste writing in the seventeenth century
- 36 Seventeenth-century prose narrative
- 37 Seventeenth-century religious writing
- 38 Seventeenth-century margins
- 39 What is Enlightenment?
- 40 The eighteenth-century novel
- 41 The eighteenth-century conte
- 42 Eighteenth-century comic theatre
- 43 Eighteenth-century theatrical tragedy
- 44 Eighteenth-century women writers
- 45 Eighteenth-century philosophy
- 46 Libertinage
- 47 Eighteenth-century travel
- 48 Eighteenth-century margins
- 49 The roman personnel
- 50 Romanticism: art, literature, and history
- 51 Realism
- 52 French poetry, 1793–1863
- 53 Symbolism
- 54 Madness and writing
- 55 Literature and the city in the nineteenth century
- 56 Nineteenth-century travel writing
- 57 Philosophy and ideology in nineteenth-century France
- 58 Naturalism
- 59 Impressionism: art, literature, and history, 1870–1914
- 60 Decadence
- 61 Avant-garde: text and image
- 62 Autobiography
- 63 The modern French novel
- 64 The contemporary French novel
- 65 Existentialism
- 66 Modern French thought
- 67 French drama in the twentieth century
- 68 Twentieth-century poetry
- 69 Francophone writing
- 70 Writing and postcolonial theory
- 71 Travel writing, 1914–2010
- 72 French cinema, 1895–2010
- 73 Writing, memory, and history
- 74 Holocaust writing and film
- 75 Women writers, artists, and filmmakers
- 76 French popular culture and the case of bande dessinée
- 77 Literature, film, and new media
- Select bibliography
- Index
Summary
Thought about thought
Sixteenth-century high culture involved much thinking about what thought is. This reflexivity was propelled by a particular historical factor – humanism.
Although earlier Italian humanism had mostly focused on recovering the ancient Roman and Greek ‘pursuits of humanity’ (studia humanitatis) – usually considered to be grammar, rhetoric, poetry (roughly what we now call ‘literature’), and moral philosophy – by the sixteenth century the attempted restoration of antiquity included in principle the whole range of ancient philosophy. Therefore, various ancient theories about the nature of thought now vied with each other. The default model of mind continued to be Aristotelian. Indeed in most areas of philosophical inquiry Aristotle continued to be more influential than any other ancient (including even his teacher Plato), following the late medieval synthesis between Christianity and Aristotelianism known nowadays as scholasticism. Humanists famously attacked scholasticism, but they still often shared some of its assumptions.
One of these (outlined in Aristotle's treatise on the soul, De anima) was that we are animated by three kinds of soul (vegetative, sensitive, intellective) and do our most advanced, abstract thinking through the intellective soul. Although the intellect is (in scholasticism's Christianised version) immortal and so separable from the body, its knowledge depends on the body, since the intellect produces knowledge by analysing the data that originates in the five external senses. The intellect transforms the particulars of sensory experience into universals.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge History of French Literature , pp. 229 - 238Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011
- 1
- Cited by