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jeers. Dolan's book is also interesting because while revising some N ew Historicist assumptions, ir nonetheless participates in the central manoeuvres of th e movement: the pamphlets she discusses alongside texts like OtheLLo an d The Winters Tale are given the same level of attentio n - no attempt is made to differe ntiate berween the literary quality of her chosen texts.

Another criticis m that has been levelled at New Historicism rela tes directly to this open-ended attitude towards culrural artefacts. For New Hisroricists, notio ns of artistic value are themselves cultu rally formed. The way BurckJ1ard r (like ma ny others) privileges Shakespeare and Leo nardo as pre-eminem anises possessed of special gifts is fro m this perspective a dubious praClice: by eleva tin g Shakespeare and Leonard o, you exclude hundreds of other voices. The process of 'canon formarion' (the constr uction of a select list of mas terpieces like Ham let and the 'Mona Lisa') becom es not just an iss ue of artisti c rasre but of the deliberate exclusion of divergent voices. N ew Hisroricisrs demo nstrate their resistance to these crad itional critical ma noeuvres by ex tending the pa rameters of what sho uld be d iscussed. A good example of this work is the growing attenti on paid to women w rite rs of the Renaissance - a group wh ich the traditi onal m ale-centred canon had excluded. But New Historicisrs can be accused of simply transferring value from uaditi on al artists like Shakes peare and Leonardo either to neglected artists, or indeed to modern historians. T he same need to privilege is co nstant, tho ugh the object of the critic's admiration has shifted .

Before closing, we must offset these criticisms with some sense of the valu e of the New H istor icist approach . As M arrin points out, the attention that has been paid to self-fas hio nin g has helped to refocus attenti on on Burckhardt's questions and the whole iss ue of the for mation of the modern individual. By resisting Bu rc khardt's pi ctu re, N ew Historicists have, in H eather Dubrow's phrase, 'spa rked interest in tensions' within Renaissance culture (p. 42). Rather than bein g the progressive new age envisaged by Burckh ardr, the Renaissance emerges as a cross-European cultural mo ment during which questions of identity were re-negotiated in respo nse to rapi dly changing social pressures. I would not be surprised if you fin d rhe whole idea of the unfree subj ect both a bit out rageous and mildly repellent - as Greenblatt's anecdote at the close of Renaissance Self Fashioning is intended to show, we are very attached to the idea of our autono my within larger social structures. Personally, I remain to be convin ced whether my identity is a socially produ ced sam pl e - an agglomeration of clich es and partly remembered texts - or whether it remains my own uniquely sel f-a utho red indi viduali ty. Bur I am sure that the N ew Historicist inspection of the constru cti o n of the self has changed both how I look at the past and how I look at mysel f.

Identity - fo r so long something we took fo r granted - has become so rn..: rhi11 g we have to p rove.

In summary: • New H isto ricism 1·t·:1~· t, .11·,.1i 11 .. 1 ·.. 1,1· I""''" 1• 1 ~ 11 1 111 11• 111 111 •ivi 11 1·, l111w lii •.t ori .d co nL..:xt sho1dd lw ll '>l'd 111 111111 1111111 1 111, ' 111.1 1 111 , til1 111 .o l ,1111l.1. l". i • C l1.11.11 ll'li , 111 .ill , , il1 11 t1 111 1111 11111111 1.. 1II ' 1111 I ii• '• 111 111111·1 I ,1111 1 i1 l1·111 i11·:

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1mwc r shapes or fashions id entity and so shapes the artefacts prod uced by past 11il 111 n·s; New I Iisro ricism therefore sees Burckhardr's model as fu ndame ntally o urdared I>\' '> t rcss ing the restrictions on individual auro nomy in any given culture; ~~,· w I lis tori cism is vuln era ble to criricism in its obsess ion with issues of power; 11 ·, i11iti:il insensitivity to rh e fo rmarion of female identities; w hile the whole 111 ,, in1 1 of rhe unfree subj ect rema in s contentious.

tJ1t 1111·:1(

llEADING

I l11l 111 , h :1 11 ccs E., Dangerous ffw1i!im:<: Represmtrztions o/Drm" ·sfic Crim t i11 l:i1gl1111d I)51i-r700 ( I il1.1, .1.111d London: Cornell U11 i vcrsi ry Press , 1994) l11li 11 >w. I k cHher, 'Twentierh Cc1Hlll'Y .Sha kespear,· Criricis111' in l'he RifJenide .'iiJtr!tespertrc: '"11 11tl l:dition (ed. G . Bbclonort· Ev:1ns .111d J. J. M. 'l(ibi11 . Boston :ind New York : I i111 1gh1on Miffl in Co .. 1997) 11111 11li l.111 . Stephen, 'In visi ble Bu ll er" in Shr1hespcrzrcrl!'l Ncgotir11io1rs: 'Ill(' Circulation of'Socia/ / 1111 1 111 i11 RenaissanCI' F11 ~!and (Oxford : Th e CLrn::11 do 11 Press, 1988) 11111 11:;11,.,· Seif-Fashioning: Fmm f\lfoff 10 Shalmpmre (C hi c1go an d Londo n: Chicago I l11 1vc "i1y Press, 1980) 111111 " "" · Richard , Forms of Nationhood: rhe fiiz.ttbe1h11n Wri1i11g of England (Chicago :llld I 11 11d1111: Chicago Un iversi ty Press. 1992) I l11' IJl1\', ( :lirisrnpher, Shahespeare, Spenser, and the Crisis itr lreh111d (Cambridge: Cam bridge l li 11 vc1>i1y Press, 1997) I 1111 11 , 1111111. 'Inventing sinceriry, refas hi oning prud ence: rhc discovery of the individual 111 ll1 1>.11".111Lc Europe', American Historim/ Review 102 (1997) I ilh 11• 1, 1:.. M. W., Shakespeares History P!a)'S (London: Charro c111d Wind us, 1944)

Joli n Martin 'Inventing Sincerity, Refashioning Prudence: The Discovery of the Individual in Renaissance Europe' ~i o 11 rce 1 :~10

from American Historical Review, 102 (5) December 1997 pp. 1309-1 7, 42.

111 tl 1l' M iddl e Ages both sides of human conscio usness - cha r which was 1111 11 n l within as char which was turned without - lay dreamin g o r half awake I11 111·;11h :1 co mmo n vei l. The veil was woven of fa ith, illusion and childish prej111 '"' ·\~ in 11, th ro ugh whi ch rhe world and history were seen clad in strange hues.

I\ 1.1 11 w:1s co nscio us of himself only as member of a race, people, parry, family, 11 1 101p1 ir: 11 io n - o nl y through some general category. In Italy rhis veil first 111 11 ·d in 10 :1ir; an 11bjccti1N' trea tm ent and consideration of the state and of all il11 11 ~'1' thi s W(l l'ld b · · :1111' possi hk . Th e subjective side ar the same rime 1 11 •d i1.,l'1i'w i1h c<H1\:s11rn di11 i-; ·mph asis; man became a spiritual individual, 1J1d 1t•101·,11i·1cd l1i 1m1 ·lf' ·" ~ 11 1 11 . 111 1\i · s:1n1 ·way rhc G 1"ek had o nce di stin1·11 1<i l1 ·ti l1i 11 1\1·ll 111 •1 11 tl1•' l1.11 i1,11i. 111 , .111d i\ I(' Ara b had fdt hi ms ·IF an incli 1lo I 11 . ii 11 ·' I " I " \ \ 1,, " "1 I1' I I\ ~ ' ' II ll ' 1. II • \\' ii II ' 111 •,1 I\I I ' " "11 I I , I\ m (' 111 h('l'8 I) r ~ r:1(('.

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THE RENAISSANCE [N EUROPE: A READER

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It will not be difficult t0 show that this result was due above all to the political circumstances of Italy.

Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (1860) More than one hundred and thirty years after its publication, Burckhardt's masterpiece The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy continues tO stimulate much of the mosr creative scholarship in late medieval and early modern European hisrory. This book, ro be sure, has never generated a scholarly consens us on the nature of the Renaissance. Ir has, however, accomplished something far m o re valuable. Ever since its publication, The Civilization ofthe Renaissance in Ita61 has cons istendy invited correction s, modifications, and refutations; it has become a classic, compelling each new generation of readers tO come ro terms with its arguments. Period subspecialists define themselves and examine their pres uppositions in relation ro this texr. Inrellectu al and cu ltural hisrorians who focus on the Middle Ages, for instance, have mustered considerable evidence that many of rhe humanistic and even individualistic ideals Burckhardt viewed as originating in Italy in the Renaissance had in fact emerged much earlier. [... ] But fo r the majority of socia l historians, Burckhardt served primarily as a marker of what they were nor. Where Burckhardt had focused on the writings of a few exceptionally talented figures, they would privilege the ex perien ce of ordinary people (merchants, artisans, peasants, vagabonds); where he had viewed the state abstracdy, in nearly Nietzschean terms, as a 'work of art,' they had begun ro decipher the social and institutional forces that shaped it; and, finally, where he had appeared ro 'celebrate' individualism , they would demonstrate the vitality of corporate and collective experience.

This essay, by contrast, is an effort ro underscore the importance of what I believe should still be called 'the discovery of the individual' for our understanding not only of high culture - arr, music, literature, and imellecrual history - bur also for our grasp of social and political hisrory as well. This does not mean that we must approach the Renaissance in traditional Burckhardtian terms. To the contrary, recent philosophical , anthropological, and literary models of the indi vidual have so transfo rmed our understanding of the human person that it is no longer poss ibl e to base our analysis of the origins of individualism on the traditional humanistic assumptions that Burckhardt rook as a given. We are, in other words, no longer in the comfortable position of believing, as Burckhardt and many of his nineteenth-century contemporaries did, that the individual existed prior to hisrory; that, if the individual was not a central concern of the Middle Ages, this was due to a veil 'of faith, illusion and childish prepossession'; that, finally, what emerged in the Renaissance was man as he really is. For in recent years, many analysts, inspired by post-structuralist and postmodern arguments and insights, have begun to argue that individualism itself is a consrru ction, that, indeed, the hum an self is in m any ways nothing more rh:rn :1 ri 1in11, and rh;lt it is above all w hat might be ca lled rh c Renaissan ce rcp r 'se111.11 i1111 ·. •ii iill' '· lf" :1 s :111 i11di vid11 :i l, expri',,~ i vv subj· ·1 1ha1 n:q 11irc cx pl:1n :11i1H1 , 1111111 · 111 ·.1 p. 11 1 nl iJ, j., ,...... 1y. il1 l" l( l; ll (', I ··x .11 11i1io Ill " "'" , j, 11il I II 11 .. Ii, V(' i ' I I 11 1Ii ' 11111•, I .I I ', IIJf ll .1 111 11' I 11 I ' 1,, 1ll <'1Il"'' I" II111 1 I I1•I • I1 111 1< I, I I 11 I I11 q' " I 111•Ii 0

13

1.!11,ili ., 111 - namely, the work of the Renaissa nce literary hisrorian Stephen 1 "'1 1il 1l:1rr and the New Hisroricists he has inspired . As I shall try ro make clear, 1I11 11 i., 111 uch in the New Hisroricisr scholarship that should interest historians, 111 ii in social or intellectual, and that needs ro be taken ser iously. Indeed, at 1 1 II h,.,\I, these scholars offer tantalizing insights imo the play of social forces 1111 1 id eo logical currents on Renaissance texts and Renaissance selves . Yer, as I !1 il l .11 g11e, their accounts are, paradoxically, profoundly ahistorical. On the on e l1111il , 1li ci r analytical strategies tend to view th e formation of rhe Renaissance II 111 111 1 wi thin a synchroni c Framework, one frozen in time, with little sense of il11 1111n: llion of more slowly developing hisro rica l - or diachronic - forces on ,j,, 11101.css of what has co me to be called 'Re naissance self-fashioning.' 1 On the ·olt 1 h. 111d,_ their analyses also rend to be based on a rotal izing view of politi cs 111.l 1111w T 1n the Renaissance world - a view that leaves lirrl e room for opposilll11 t.il n r d lssennng voices. Accordingly, in the seco nd part of this essay, I rry to •1111 1I ti 1is by offering an altern ative approach to a sa li ent as pecr of the history .t il1 lm 111at10n of Renaissance selves . Jn particular, I examine the effort on both 111 11 11• 11 :ii and practical levels durin g the Renaissance period ro redefine certain "1 111 ii • .11 cgories relating ro sincerity and prudence and th e relation of th ese redcl111111t1 11' 10 the formation of an increased sense of subj ectivity and individual' 111 J\ 1)'. cl aim isnot that rh_ese shifts alone were responsibl e for th e generation I t1H l1v1d11:d1sm 111 the Renaissance. As Michael Mascuch has recen tly cautioned 111 111 "' ud y of the self in seventeenrh -cenrury England, 'i ndividualism is a mul11. l111 11'1" i1111al phenomenon , an amalgam of pra cti ces and values with no dis111il1 k l rnrer. A variety of forces - social, economic, political, intellectual 11111 d1111 vd ro its making, each o ne of which was paramoum at some rime or 111 111 111 1, vi1hcr separately or jointly with others. Thus a single account of indihl1 1il1 ·, 111 can not possibly represent its developm ent, its conto urs, its funct ions.' 2 • 1111 1li r l ·ss, the evidence I have gathered does suggest that this shifr in moral •" ii 11 if .11 y played a significant role in the construction of new notions of indi11 !11 il 1' 111 i11 rhc Renaissance world.

1 • 1 1I1 · p:1 s1 few decades, scholars have approached th e problem of the emer111' 111 1he mod ern self from a variety of perspectives . [... J But, as I indicated 11.,1 •. 1hl' 111m1 inAuenrial and innovative treatment of the Renaissance self is I 11111, I 111 1hc work of Stephen Greenblatt and, most notably, in his now class ic 111 1I1 l.'r•11r1i sst111cc Self Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare. This book, which 1 I11 .. 1 p11hl is li ed in 1980, has proven enormously influential. This is especially 1 11° 111<;, · ·nhl:1u's own Field oFliterature, where his ideas have bee n fundamental loil 1111 1lvvl·lnplll L"IH New Hisro ri cism, a critical movement that, in its reac"' "' 11•,. 111 1'.t th · lor111: dis1 en idealist readings of the New Critics, has sought ro • 1°1 1111 1,11 1vx1s :1s c:11l111ral :1nifocts or practices, dialectically related to the spelt• 1il1 111 ,il , ' O ·i:d, :i nd poliri cal ·01Hex rs in which they were written. In addi11 11 11 11 1d w/1 .11 i ~ k- i ~ i vc l1 n · tl1 e N -w J li ~ 1ori c is rs also view th e self, like a 1 " ' '' ,1 ,11 1.1111 1111111 111111 " 1·111i1 1 11111 r:1Llwr :is :1 si1 · 0 11 which broader institu" ' 11 ,J 1!11l 111.J 111 1.d 11>1• "" .11 1· """ 1i/,,.,1, j,, . / Svlf' r'." l1 i11 11 i1 11·. l1:1s hco rn · :1 c111r:il 111 lllO -: 11 111, I j•/<11 ,111" 11 11 1 I' • II ll '•',11\o I ol lll l 1'. lli }' lll11<l 1•111 f 1ililll ( j',1"11("1.ii/)I, IJ 1

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Tf!E RE N AISSANCE IN E UROPE: A READER

is dqlloy ·I 111 a v:1ric1y o!' liclds: i11 social history, art history, intellectual histo ry, rlH: history ()!" ., cience, and it eve n has important implications for the stud y of the self" in other rimes and places.

On many levels, this development is noc surprising. As a descripti ve category, self-fashioning seems to capcure much of what is popularly beli eved abo ut Ren aissance life. As Greenblarc notes, 'the simplest observacion we can make is that in che sixteemh century there appears to be an in creased sel f-consciou sness about the fashioning of human identity as a manipulable, artful process.' Above all, selffashioning appea rs to make sense of a world in which th e court was central to literary life - for thi s was a world in which prudent acco mmodation and even deception were often seen as virwes. And indeed, the Renaissa nce wo rld was a tbearrical age - an age of masks, of masq uerades, of role playing, of the swdied nonchalance of sprezzatum lease of manner in style or performancej, even of 'hones t dissi mulaci o n.' Clearly, at least among the priv ileged orders, men and women were ofren conscio us of fas hionin g parti cular selves in order to survive or advance in the high-stakes world of co urt society.

Bur self-fas hioning is nor only powerful descripti vely, it is also heuristically powerful. Ar a point when social history appears to have reached an impasse in its ability to offer convincing explan atio ns of culwral developments, selffashioning holds our the promise of offering scholars new ways of thinking about the interplay of social and culm ral life. As Green blan himself notes, 'self-fashioning derives its interest precisely from th e fact that it functions witho ut rega rd for a sharp distinction between literature and social life.' In shore, ir seems to offer a way around both idealist acco unts of culwre such as chose found in tradition al histories of lirerature and ideas and chose Marxist accounts that privilege the infrastructure to such a degree that culrural life is viewed passively, as a mere reflecri o n of social relations. In th eo retical terms, we mighr say, self-fashioning avoids borh the abstract aesrheticism of formal analyses and the reRectionist ass umptions of much Marxist theo ry. Throughout his wo rk, G reenblatt deftly merges a consideration of id eas and social life; he argues against rheories chat deny 'any relation between the play and social life' and those char affirm 'thar the larter is "the thing itself, " free from interpretario n. ' In his view, 'Social acti ons are themselves always embedded in systems of public signification, always grasped, even by their makers, in aces of interpretatio n, while the words rhar consritute the works of literature rhat we discuss here are by their very nature rhe manifest assurance of a similar embeddedness.' Orher scholars have fastened onto rhis dimension of his ideas. As the historian of science Mario Biagioli has put it in his recent study of Galileo, the 'focus on processes of self-fashi oning may help bypass som e of the deadlocks of the so-called externalists-versus-internalisrs debate that has characterized much of recent and not so recent science smdi es.'

One can view Galil eo's insights , that is, not exclusively as rh o nscq uence of external social and politi cal facrors impinging on rhc s ' irn 1i f;, i111 ,11\i11:11iD11 nor as merely rhe res ult of developments wirhin R cn:1i s ~. 1111 ,. 111 ,11 l11111 .11 i1 ·, :111d asr ronomy, b111 r:11h er as ihe rn 1rc0111 · o l C:dil ·o's ow11 'ff1oi1 1111111 1• 11 1 11111nl ( 1ili 111 1· .111 tl j,, 11.1i 1rn1.11•, c <'Xi>< 'rl. 11 inn., i11 nl 11 it1 11'"I11 1 I • 11•1 ""' to 1 l1,11<1< p1 · .,, II 111 ' I I11 ( ' ii ii· '111 II I I ii II I j, "I i '· t I111 '< . I II " .I ii I II' I ii II I I .i " I ii I I11111 ' 1•1 I '•I

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ONE: TH E IMPACT Of H UMAN IS M

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1111 1 purely of developments intrinsic to science bur of the way these t\vo spheres 11 11 ·r., ected in Galileo's studied 'self-fashioning.' [See page 322 below. ] h 1lcci ally significant, however, is Greenbl att's in sistence o n a new noti on of 1Ii · It 11111an person - one that wo uld have been w ho!ly alien ro Burckhardt. For wli ilt· irs ride seems to suggest a kind of independence on the pan of rhe self, or, 1 n11L· cri tic has crenchantly observed, while G reenbl art seems at times ro invite 11 '10 read "self-fas hioning" as free, expressive self-making,' Renaissance Self / ,1 ,/1i1111ing is in fact a study not of th e way in which human sub jects fashi o ned il1<·111., clves but rather oF the way in which cerrain po liti ca l and reli gious forces 11 1l1 l' Renaissance created th e fiction oF individual auton omy. For, in th e end, 111·L· 1dil:m's Renaissance Se!fFtZShioning offers a view of di e se lf as a cul rural artil 11 1, .1 hi storical and id eo logical illusi on gen era ted by the eco nomic, social, reli' 111 11,, :111 d politi ca l uph eava ls oF th e Renaissance. Creenbl arr's project, in shorr, Ii t'• rn mibuced in decisive ways to a new hi storiograph y oF th e self. Ea rlier Iii 1111·ies - grounded in the liberal and conservative myrhs of rhe gradual ln11 l1noi c emancipatio n of rh e indi vidual - have given way to histo ries that 1 l' l(/ rv the varied constructions of th e self in different time periods and differ11 1 11ilr ures. Not only is it no longer poss ible ro view its history as one of con11 1111rn 1s development, bur indi vidualisrn, [. . . J is itse lf nor a uniqu ely Wesrern pli 'Jlll lll el1011. l I1i .~ new understanding of th e history of individuali sm is ex plicit in the struc111 1v <, ( Ncnaissance Self Fashioning in whi ch the various 'a utho rs' -Th o mas More, ' il li.1 111 ' l)1ndale, Thomas Wyatt, Edmund Spenser, C hristopher Marlowe , and ill i, 1111 Shakespeare - are each viewed as shaped above all by the social, cul tural, ,, l11·,i01 1s , :i nd political tensions of Tudor England. T hus identity is nor a given; 1 1il1 v1. 11 is a cultural or political artifact, or, as Greenblatt pithily remarks, 'we 111 11• ~: 1 y rh ar self-fashioning occurs at the poim of enco unter between an 111 1ll<" i1y :111d an alien.' More's self-fashi oning, fo r example, is portrayed as raking iii l•l' i11 1h l:' interplay of his submission to the authority of rhe church and his " I 11111 .. i1io11 w heresy and the monarchy, while Tyndale's self is depi cted as devel111 11 111'. <> 111 oF the tensions between his opposition to th e church, on the one han d , 111d l1 is s11hrnissio n ro Scripture as authority, on the other. Or, as Green blatt 1d,.,( 1v ·.~ . in :111 eloquent comparison of the processes of self-fashioning that Ii 111·d 1h ·identities of More and Tyndale, 'The Bible ... provides for Tyndale li ,11 il1 e C hurch prdvides for More: noc simply a point of va ntage but a means 111 1h""rl' the :1mbiguiri es of identity, the individual's mingled egotism and self111 1ii1i 11 •. i11io a larger, redee mi ng certainty.' [. .. ] I11 h · ·' "re, i here arc mome nts in Renaissance Self-Fashioning and elsewhere in 111 w11 rl, wli ·n Cr· ·11hlatt seemingly longs for a more resilient self - moments iJ , 11 10 11ll' 'lose Lo r ·ifyi11 g 1he co n ·epr of sel fhood rhar he elsewhere unrelent1111 ', 11• d \'1 n 11 ~ 1l'l1 l l ~ . Ai on e p<>i11t, li e ·li :1ranni zes rh e Renaissance self as ' brinle 111il 111,11k1 p1 ,11 1·': :11 .111<lll 1t;1', I. . .I li11 all y a11d 111osr poignanrly, in the final sen11 111 1 1.. /,'1 ·11111'111////'I' S1•/f' !·;1,/1i1111i11,<;. :11'1 ·r of'i' ·ri1q ' :111 an ecdo rc, Greenblatt ! pl 11 m 111 ·, 11 1'1'< 1111 1<'11 .i 111 1·,1111 ,il •.111 11' :1 ,,1111 1 :1h<)1 11 hi111 ~ ·I( - h ·c~n1 s., a~ h · 11111 II ' I \\ ,1111 l• i 111 •I \\' 111 1< '\\ I I il 11 ' J.,.,, ,,, 111 \1 11v1 ·111.dw l111 il'I', 111 •t•d Ii• \ll\ Llill il11 11 111 •,1<1 11 il 111 I ,1111 1111 111111°11•11 11 1,il I I " ' Ill\ 111\1 11 1.J, ·11111 1 ' 1'i ·111 <' il1 <' l1 •;>, , '.I I • 11

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THE RENAISSANCE IN EUROP E: A READER

passages are fleeting, and for the most p art Greenblatt maintains or implies that even the most substantial selves are egos built on fictions. In one of his m ost revealing discussions of Renaissance selfhood, for example, G reenblatt, after citing a famous passage from Leviathan in which Thom as H o bbes offered his definition of 'person,' notes that in Hobbes, the 'narura l person' originates in the 'artificial person' - the m ask , the ch arac ter on a stage 'translated ' from the th eater to th e tribunal. There is no laye r d eeper, more authe ntic, than theatrica l self-representation. This conception of the self does no t d eny th e im porra nce o f the bo dy ... but it d oes not anchor perso nal identity in an inali e nable biological co nrinuity. The crucial consideration is ownership: wha t distin guishes a 'narn ral' person from an 'a rtificial ' perso n is that the forme t· is considered to own hi s words and actions. Considered by whom? By a uth ority. But is autho rity itself then na cural o r artificial?

In a move that is one of rh e corne rsto nes of Hobbes's absolutist po litica l philoso phy, a uthority is ves ted in an anifi c ial person who represents the words and actions of the entire nati on . All men th erefo re are impersonators of themselves, bur impersona tors whose clear title to ident ity is secured by an a uthority irrevo cably deeded to an arrifical person. A grear mask allows one to own as o ne's own face ano ther mask.

Or, as G reenblatt concludes in the epilog ue to Renaissance Seif-Fashioning, 'the human subject itself began to seem remarka bly unfree, the ideological product of the relations of power in a particular soc iety. ' Greenblatt, in shorr, is powerfully historicist in his argurnen t. Like other histo ricisrs, he sees the sel f not as a free, autonomo us subj ect b ut ra ther as subj ec ted to (because gene rated by) the codes o f cu ltu re and power, o r wha t Greenbl an calls 'the culcural poetics' of a particula r ser of cultural, political, and social relations. fd entity is shaped from the outside. [.. . J Thus from the vantage point of much n ew literary criticism , Burckhardt's selfcreating individ ual is largely myth. This is so much the case, in fact, that among New Historicis ts and othe r scholars influenced either by Greenblat t or other postsrructu ral isr and postmod ern discourses, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy now serves as a canonical market of a p aradi gm surpassed. [.. . ] The ride has shifted , th en, from Burckhardt's notion of the discovery of the individual to a New Hisco ri cist analy tics of self-fashioning. Certainly many aspects of th e notion self-fashio ning are, as I have tried to suggest, compelling at both a descriptive and a h euristi c level. But how are historians to make sense of this transformation in the ra dically altered understanding of the constru ction of the self in Rena issa nce Europe> Are we simply to accep r the view that the self, in the Renaissance as in all periods, is a m ere culrural artifact, an d that the humanist self was (an d remai n s) no more than an illusion - something 'remarkably unfree' o r merely 'the id eological product of the relations of pow er in a particular society'? W as the individual, in fact, 'cominually mad · :111d 1· ·1 11ack'> Ill short, does the concept of self- fas hioning provide an ad cq11 :1tc · cl c·.,t 1ip1i o 11 o F th, · production o f subj ectiv irics o r. m o re prnsa i a ll y. or tl w .Ii· .. •1 \1 '· I "' iill' i11di vi d 11:il in 1lw l~v 11 : 1 i''· 111 t .-'

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I It I N <lN l ·.: THE IM PACT OF HUMANISM

17

111 1hv m ost striking features of Renaissance notions of the self was an ex plic1il I 1y1 ·1 ·d quality, which represe nted a sense not only of inwardness or inreri'" 11 \ IH 1t a lso of mystery abour w hat Renaissance writers, drawin g on a lo ng 11 1. 11 111111 , imagined as their inner selves . This con cern was manifest as ea rly as 1I11 J111 11 IL"L' ll th century in Petrarch's writings, especially the Secretum [what is • 11 t I 111 which, und er the influence of Augustine, Petrarch examined th e depth 111 I Ii · , horrcom ings of his own soL1l. In the six teenth century, however, this 1<11•' • 11 1cached a n ew level of inte nsity. The Ve netian reforme r Gaspa ro Co n1111 111 10 11 vcyed a sen se of this inwa rdn ess in a celeb ra ted letter, his epi stle • • l11111 111 :1so G iusriniani of April 1511: ' if yo u were ro know me from within I l/'/111riw ffo), as I really am (but eve n l do nor kn ow inyse lf well) , you wo uld t•"I 111 ii · s11 ch a judgmenr about m e.' In a similar vein, John Calvin, in language ii• 11 11 h, t ami ally exp anded the topograp hy of inte rioriry, enco uraged his • • L 1 111 loo k more d eeply into themselves : ' Th e huma n hea rt has so man y cra nli 1c vanity hides, so man y holes where fals ehood lu rks, is so d ecked o ur 11/1 ii l' ivin g hypocrisy, that it ofi:en du pes itself' M onta igne, on e of rhe pre11111111 11 .1rchitccts of inwardness in the sixtee nth century, made a simil ar obser1111n1 ·1 , w ho make no other profession, find in me such infinite depth and 1111 I ~. 1l1 :1t what I have learned bears n o other fruir than to make me rea lize 111 11 h I sti ll have to learn .' And th e wo rks of Wyatt, the Tudo r poe t, as 1d1 l,111 h imse lf notes, are m a rk ed both by rh e ir ' inwardness' and thei r 11 ' I)' 11v 1sonal' na ture.

11111 1.I , "'' c can point not only to a uthor after auth or from the Ren aissance I·:r:1s rn us, Luthe r, More, Montaigne, Shakespea re - who made iss ues of 1111 111 c 11 tral to his discussion of the human situat ion but also to th e way Ii 11 I1 th is dimension of experie nce was registered beyond the rea lm o f g rea t 11 c-., 11c ·i;1 1ly poignant series of examples deri ves from the inquisito ri al , 1. I ,111 l th e 111a1·tyrologies of this period. The Acts and !Vlonuments of the I 111 11 11 111.1 1·tyrologisr John Foxe, for instance, are filled with Protestant saints I1" 11 ii l.1 1 · ove 1 t he q ues tion of whether or not rh ey sho uld reveal their beliefs II• / , • 111 v" 1ions to rl 1c Catholic prelates who exam ined them , before fin ally elect' • 111 t11 ,il · t I1 ·i r ' i111J er' con victions known. Inquisitorial archi ves provide similar 1I11 1 1 1p~ t <.:c khrated oF which was tha t of the Italian lawye r Francesco Sp iera, 1,,. '' "f"l" k I wi 1h 1he qucs rion of w h ether or not to dissim ulate his beliefs as • 11d i111 n tliv t1·ibunal in Venice, only to abjure his convictions befo re the 1111111 11,.1 111d l:i tc1 10 reg rcr ir so d eep ly that he starved himself to d eath, co n"" d 111 w. 1 go ing 10 l lcll. Cal vin , w ho was familiar w ith this case, raised the 1 il11 l111 111.1 1 Sp i Ta was hard ly an isolated example. Th e Catholic lands, he 1 '" 111 .1 ·.c 1j, ., 111' t r ·ar ises :111<l lcm::rs, were filled w ith those h e called 1 .. ,I, '' "" " 111 1c-l' ·rc ·11 c · to di e ea rl y Christian Nicodemus, who, according to ii 1 ""1'1 I cd !1.!111 , h.1d ·0 1n,· to J ·s11 ,, 'liy night') - m en and women, that is, J,,, ' 11 1'11<1 1'. 1,1111 Ii lwlid h111 wl1 0 ·o rJL inucd to arrend Mass and m ake a I 11 11 1 111 111 1" ( '. 1il 111li t 11 1 1i111 IC<I tl1 ·ms ·Ives :rnd 1h t·ir f:1milies fro m persecurn111 !1 11 Ill il 11 1{1 lld i .'.. 11 11 I ' I 111111 . I •, W1•ll , tht• i., ,'il!" Or iii,· n.: pr "$ "lll :lliOll ()r th e I I I 1111 .1 , 111111 II " " " 111 " " Id , ,ii il1 1• 1•li1 1'·,, Tl w Vl' I p11p11l :1rit I o r I ,] 11 di1111i •, / /1111/. 11/ //11 ( 11/111/1 '/ 11•11 "Iii \' 111 11.i/1 11111 1il111111•. l111 11i 1 1111

18

THE RENAISSANCE IN EUROPE: A READE R

Europe provides evidence of this. The Italian humanist and historian Francesco Guicciardini gave simultaneous expression to courdy and religious concerns when he observed in his Ricordi [Diaries]: 'And yet the position I have filled under seve ral Popes has obliged me for personal reasons [per el particulare mio] to desire their greatness. But for this I should have loved Manin Lmher as myself.'

The experience of personhood in the Renaissance world was, in short, often the experience of a divided self, of a person who was frequently forced to erect a public fac;:ade that di sgu ised hi s or her convictions, bel iefs, or feelings. In the Re naissance generally and the sixteenth century in parti cu lar, we see a new emphasis on inwa rdn ess o r rh e idea of an interior sel f as the core of personal identity. To be sure, th ere was nothing new about th e noti on of irnerioriry per se. Medieval soc iety, es pecia lly in the wake of the culmral and monastic reviva ls of the late eleventh and th e twelfth ce nturies, had num ero us writers and theologians who fashion ed a deep se nse of inwardness and inrerio riry. Bernard of Clairva ux's mystical rheology, whi ch was even distributed in vernacular translations, elaborated rhe most complex psychology of the soul since Augustine. Peter Abelard's ethics shifted th e attention of moral judgmenc away from deed to the intention that lay behind it. Aelred of Rivaulx undersco red the importance of inwardness in his celebrated treatise on spiritual friend sh ip. And medieval penitential theory and practice began to stress conrririon - ge nuine so rrow for one's sins - over external acts of penance. But there was something signifi cantly new abo ut the way in which men and women in rhe Renaissance bega n to conceptualize the relation between what rhey saw as rhe interior self on rhe one hand and the expression s of one's tho ughts, feelings. or beliefs on the o ther. Indeed, it is by carefully analyzing chis shift from medieval ro Renaissance notions of the relation of the interior self to such expressions that we can both better grasp what has come to be called the Renaissance discovery of the individual along with the new sense of subjectivity (bo th in the sense of ownership of and agency behind one's speech, thoughts, and actions) that it entailed. H ere my analysis shall be limi ted , as I noted earlier, to two relatively well-focused developments: rhe Renai ssance refashioning of the virtue of prudence and the rather more sudden emergence in sixteenth-century disco urse of the ideal of sincerity.

Prudence, unlike sincerity, is an ancie nt virtue, with classical roots. It played a central role for Aristotle, who viewed prudence (phronesis) as the practical reason that guided one's choice in the process of ethical decision-making. In late antiquity, a number of authors - mosr notably, Augustine - linked this classical ideal to th e Christian concept of Providence. Indeed, the two terms prudentia and providentia both derived from the Latin providere ('to foresee,' 'to take precaution,' 'to provide for' ). As a result, throughout most of the Middle Ages, prudence was viewed as Christian wisdom and took its place alongside remr 'l':t11 ·, r(lrrirude, and justice as one of rhe four cardinal virtues. For insr:111 '\", 11 11' 11Vt"lr1h ·nrury theologian Alan of Lille stared in his /)e virtutihm I 011 !111· 1 11/111 .j , 'p1 11el ·11 · · is rhe discemmentof rhoser hin gs rha1 ar· ood , 1,: vil , 111 1111 .,I 1 11 11 iJ,, .1vnid. 1111'« of evil and rhe election of 1h(" J',Ont I.' I11 ' J'I10 111.1 " •111111 • •,,, /,, ,1/11,1•1.1.- [ !'lit' / ."f\('l//i11!1 11(711N1/i1,<!_ )I[ , p1111 l1 1111 I ~ ' ''1111".1'111 11 1 ·'" I 1111 11 1 qd · td 1111 1· I 11111 il .. 11 '" 1

d I 11< lN

ONE: THE IMPACT OF HUMANISM

19

111, i ~ ivc , when properly developed, in holding the pass ions and the appetites in , Ii ., k when these threaten one's ability to obtain happiness or salvation . ' Pruii , 11 c,' Thomas wrote, 'is a virtue most necessary for human life. For a good life , rn" ists in good deeds. Now in order to do good deeds, it matters nor only what 1 111 .11 1 does but also how he does it; to wit, that he do it from right choice and 11111 111 n dy from impulse or pass ion.'

Y1 ·1 1his ideal underwe nt a significant shift in th e I rali an Renaissance, especially 111 1l 1v Lire fourteenth and fiftee nth cenmries, when humanisrs began reading and 1111 1111rcring Aristotle's wo rks - above all , his Nicomachean Ethics - outsid e a 1111il y 1heologica l context. In rbe hands of such huma nisrs as Coluccio Salurati, I ' 11 11.1rdo Bruni, Giovanni Ponrano , and Lorenzo Valla , prudence w;1s no lon ge r iii l'q uivalent of providence bur r;Hher an ethical srrarq,')' rhat gave new 111p l1." is to the individua l's will. And in th e ea rly sixtee nth ce ntury, in rhe work ol tvl.1 l1 iavelli, prudence was divorced entirely from ethics . As Machiavelli argued Ill I f,11 11o us passage of The Prince, 'a wise ruler runo signore prudente] cannot, nor I 1111 ild I1L» keep his word when doing so would be to hi s di sadvantage and wh en il11 11 .1"0 11 s rhat led him to make promises no lon ge r exist ... But one must know 1111 111 di sguise this nature well, and how to be a fine li :u and hypocrite [simu''"' r rli.rsimulatore]; and men are so simple-minded and so dominated by their I" 1 111 11 ccds that one who deceives will always find one who will allow himself 1 • Io ti ., civet! .' In Castiglione's Book ofthe Courtier, th e humanist Pietro Bembo 1 11. 1I1.11 one should never rrusl anyone, nor even a dea r fri end , to the extent I 111111 1n11n ica ring without reserva tion all one's thoughts to him ,' while the lq .J 111 11.1 1 1:nlerico Fregoso, the primary spea ker of Book II, explicirly recorn "'' 111 1 '. 1 Lc rrain studied diss imulation' in one's co nversation. Although other 1111, 1lil' llrcscnred as objecting to the opinions of these spea kers, the overall ii 1111 1 nl C.1s1iglione's dialogue is to view conversation as an an, in which nothing 111 I 1li .11 I1a ~ not previously been thought through. As Federico remarks at the I 1 111 11 111 1" of' Book 11 , 'One should consider carefully whatever one does or says, 111 11. !1 11 1" 10 1hc place where one does it, in whose presence, at what rime, and 11 1111 t1 1v · 1;>r o ne's actions, one's own age, profession, th e ends one is striving I ' 11 11 I ii 1· nH-;1ns rhar can lead there, and thus, with these things having been 11 111111 .1, crn1nr, ler him accommoda~e himself discreerly for all he wishes to 1

I 1 11J JH

11 . '

11 11 11 1w 1111d l'J'sr:rndin g of prudence was widespread. [... J 111111 1 111i.il rli ·101ic was, moreover, an increasingly important dimension of , , 1 rl.1 y, I11 ;1 v:iri uy of venues, great emphasis was placed on the impor' 11l 1 1il1l v .11 i11 ~ :1 ·cri :i in :1111higuity about one's beliefs in daily interactions.

11" 1 I111 (1k.~ frnm 11:10 !0 d:1 Cerr;ildo's Lihro di buoni costumi to Leon "' 11 \ 1 ,1 11i "· /)1'//11 /(1111~~/irt ro Francesco Cuicciardini's Ricordi - recom11 111 I. , I 1 11 11.1 i11 , .1 111 i1111 i11 r ·v ·:di11g o ne's convictions or feelings. To a large II I 11 <1 1 '. llllll j, jllf\ il 1.11 iJ1 c dcn1 :i 11ds of \'V• Tyd:ty li fe, both in the cities ' I 111 1111 111 , 11 1 l\1 ·11.1i·,o,. 111 11 • 1:111i11l,-, w11d ·d to co ll:ips' 1hc rr;idirional distinc{. 11 1111 , , 11 111111!1 ·1111 .1111! .! i 1,o, i11 11il .11 irn 1, /\ lil1"11 1\l1 l1i s1ori ' :ii so ur cs ;trc 111 .1 1 1111 !11 11 "''11" , 11 •1 . .iii .. 111•.1111 1' .. r iii « ·.i ·ll 111 11 rl .111 111 111 1· x1, . In Ii II 111 11 11 (I < 1111111111 1 tli1 l o 11 1111«1 I to 11 11 I \ 1'. , ,j iJ 11 11 111 'iJ', lil111I ". .1111[ 11 \111 1 J

20

THE RENA ISSANCE IN EURO PE: A READER

workers or to negotiate the demands of their own sexuali ty against a backdrop of seemingly im possible religious demands, for example, it is evident that lay people in the !are Middle Ages often viewed the self as a compl ex entity. For the early Renaissance, ev idence is mos t persuasive in such se ttings as Florence, where merchants, bankers, and affluent artisa ns began kee ping di aries (ricordz) that ofte n provide revealing glimpses of th ese inrernal co nAicts. And a recent stud y of sexuality in Renaissa nce Venice has made it clear th at adu lt Venetians, whil e posing publicly as mo ral members of a Christian soci ety, often self-consciously engaged in a va riety of sex ual practices beyond the expected boundaries of proper behav ior - eviden ce th at self-fashio ning was an aspecr of the li ves of town speople as well as those of co urti ers.

T he Renaissance refashioning of prud ence ind icates a significa nt shift in the un derstandin g of th e self. Both the emph as is on deli bera ti on - as, for exampl e, in the popularity of dialogues in which th e inte rl ocutors deba te issues from different perspectives - and the practical divo rce of prud ence from ethics placed new emp hasis on the hu man subject. To be sure, there was much in Aquinas's thought that had invested the self (whe ther understood as intell ecr or will) w ith a significam role in decision-m aking, but Aqu inas's emphasis co nsistently fell on the need to bring th e appetites and the will into co nform ity with properl y determined ends. In the Midd le Ages, it was the role of the virtues bo th to hold the pass ions in check and to enco urage thoughtful delibera tion abo ut the proper ends of one's acrions. from the fiftee nth ce ntury o n, by contrast, the wi ll was seen as increasingly free of these external (and internal) consu aims and more emphasis was placed on the feelings, emotions, and ex press iveness of what we m ight describe as the individual subj ect.

This new emphasis on the self as subj ect is even mo re appa rent in the Renaissance inventio n of si ncerity. Like m any words that eventually gained a wide currency, sincerity had many significations . Befo re the Renaissance, the word 'sincere' had genera lly referred to some thing (often a materi al substance such as a li quid or a m etal) that was pure or unadulterated, bu r in the sixteenth century, as the eminent literary hisrn ri an Lionel Trilling arg ued in a famo us essay, since rity became a moral catego ry, referring, as Trilling pur it - concisely but usefu lly - 'rn a congruence between avowal and acrual feelin g.' 3 T har is, in rhe midst of the sixreenrh cenrury (altho ugh there is so me ev iden ce rh at this new moral mea ning of si nceri ty had begun to appear in earl ier Renaissance writers such as Petrarch and Valla), we discover a growi ng moral imperative to make one's feelings and convictions known. Indeed, I would argue th at this is a characteristi cally modern co ncern: to stare char someon e is sincere or nor sin cere, to see particular urrerances and works of an and literature as essential ex press ion s of individual selves, above all , tO desire tO connect speech wirh lt-r lin g. Th e sixtc ·nrh and seventeenrh centuries explored many face rs of rliis i.!1•.il , ' /l ,/11111 · in th y hca rr, and wrirc' - as Sir Philir Sid n /s m11sc ·n ·011 1·:11•,1 '< 1 11 1111 11 11 ;111 lw SlT ll as :111 ·p igr:im of tlK· :igc, :1'. 111 igl11 tl 1· Sl1.1k ·spt'. ll l'. 111 :1111 11 1 111 , 11111 11 l'11 l1J11i 11,, '111 1l 1i 1ll t1\'.11 .,,·II lw 11 111'' 11111 1lt1· "" 1J',J '. l1• (111 ii ,. 11111 11 1o l 11 1., · 111 1,1il111,

1•

I

IN t>NI ·:: THE I MPACT OF HUMANISM

2I

111111111 tlic lralian h umanists, th ough ic was the ea rl y Protestant refo rm ers who I 111ii ' incerity to a defining virrue.

Ii illl' v.il authors had also developed an ideal of rhe proper relation between 1111 il1 t·y described as the incernal se lf (homo interior) and one's words and • 111111 . 1\111 , significantly, rhey did not use che term 'sincerity' t0 describe rhis • I t1Jo 11 1. Turnin g tO language rhac had in fact develo ped much ea rlier, within 11'1 t11t •dicval monas ticism, they culrivaced rhe idea l of concordia (harmony o r • 1 11 11•11t) :md related express ion s [... ] to describe the proper interplay between II 111d 011 c's words and deeds. A key text was rh e Rule ofSt. Benedict, in which iii 111 111 111r self was tO be fas hio ned to correspo nd to rh e language of th e psa lms 11 11 1111 11111 1:1ted the monk's dail y lite, as whe11 Be nedi cr co unse led monks rn pray " 11• 11 .1 way 'chat our mind be in agreement with our voice.' Jn ch e twe lfth 1111111 , il1is ideal took hold. Hu gh of St. Victor, in his co mm entary on the Rule f 111.~wtine, for example, cired Benedi cr when he wrore: 'of chose cha m ing • l111H Ii , . . . their mind sho uld be i11 agree ment [concordare debet] with their ' I11 hi s f,{fe ofAeli-ed, the C istercian Walrcr Dan iel pra ised rhc way in whi ch 111 ,I' 1v.1t hings were in harmony with hi s li fe and his works: 'he did not li ve Jil l 11 111 11· 1l1 :1 n he taughr, but his work was in ag ree menc [concordabat] with his 111d wh ar he taugh r in words, he pu t fort h with examp les.' Concordia was 1• 1111 .ii tlm.:ad of the universe in Bernard of Sy lves ter's neo .1>lat0n ic Cosmo,/," Ii ho 1111d che earth to the heavens and che so ul ro the body. [... J l11il• 1ti , 11vcr and over aga in in rhe texts from th e Middl e Ages, concordia was 1.I 1" 1l1 c id ea l aro und which one sho uld strucrure language and life in rela•11 '" Ii · l ie! ~ and co nvictions. In the ea rl y thirtee nrh ceritury, Sr. Francis wrote I 11 11 11 1 •, l1 011ld pray in such a way that 'one's voice was in agreement with o ne's 11111 ' 111 d tlt c ideal of concordia or consonantia persisted rhro ugh D an te and t 11111111 .i Ke mpis. Jn rh e late fiftee nth century, we find ir as well in the Platoni c 11 11111• 111 M:1rsilio Ficin o. ' No harmony gives greater deligh t than rhac of heart • I 111111,i ll' ' is rhc rirl e Ficino gives tO one of his lerrers. Like the oth er neo1l11 .. 1111 w1itc rs Bern ard of Sylvester and Alan of Lille before him, Ficin o coo 1. I, 11 111•.11 !1 1:11 rhc conco rd between heart and tongue was only one aspect of I 11 • 1 d1 vi11c 11l:i11. /\s he wrote in his letter on music, 'a man is not harmo11 1 Ii 11111 11 ·d wlt o does nor delight in harmony ... for God rejoices in 1111111 11 1n "' "11 :111 ·xtc n\ rhar he seems t0 have created the world especially for I 1 1. 1 1111 . 11 1:11 :di irs indivi dual parts should sing harmoniously to themselves 111 111 iiH· wlt ok 11111 vn.~l:.' As an ethi c, then, concordia or harmony placed the 111 I 111 1pl 1.1~i ~ 01 1 tl1 l' :1 gre ·rn cnc of one person with another in relation to the 1 l1q 1111 C,11d . 11111 iii · slt il_.r ro rhc id ea l of sinceri.tas was not merely rhe result 1 l1 il1 11 1 .. 111 i,tl .111d · ·0 110111 ic .~rru crures, with the conseq uences these new 1111·11 11Ill l1.1d 1;11 I olk ., iv . lili ·. It was rri marily the ou tgrowth of an intel111ii1111 il111i1111 1v1 111.il tn tl1 c ris · of' l'rot cst:111tism.

I ii • 111 ,111 y 111 111 1d i11 11 ·11",io 111, 1l 111 ·d il'va l liJ ", tl1l· idc:il of crmcordia had rested 11 111, 1 1111q•1t1111, wi d1 · ~ p1 '. 1d i11 iii · 111 1111:1s1i · :111 J Ca tholic culrure of rhis 1/.1111.I il111 1111 111 11 11,1111111 .. 11111 "" l1111d .11 111 ·111.dl 1 ~ i 111 i l : 1 r It> ( ;l>d. /... /Medi ·va l 111 1 • I"• 1tlh I" 1• 1111111 1; 111 1111 I I\• ll il1 11 111111 \' '< 1111 ,. tll 11111tl1 ·l 1h 1 · 111 ~(' l v1·, 1

22

THE RENAISSANCE IN EUROPE: A READER

on Christ. They viewed the spiritual li fe as preeminently a quest for the recovery of the image of God within themselves. The Delphic Oracle's pronouncement 'Know Thyself' became, in their understanding of the human person, not a command to discover a uniqu e personality but rather an ideal to recover the image of God within the self. [. .. ] In the late Middle Ages, beginning with William of Ockham, nominalist theologians began to develop arguments that evemu ally eroded, especially in the work of Martin Luther, th e anthropology on wh ich this idea l of concordia bad been based. For, unl ike earl ier medieva l th eologia ns and mystics, Luther co uld not accept the principle that man was essentially simil ar to God . To the contrary, Lutheran anthropology was based on a principl e of dissimilarity. The human person was fundam entall y sinful, a concept that was reitera ted with special force in Calvin's recurrem emphasis on the majesty of God and the depravity of man.

The implications of t his shift to a new anthropology were manifold, but at the very least they undermined rhe possib ility of concordia. The human person was no longer viewed as in a (potentially) harmonious relation to God, the cosmos, and to him or herself but as an inevitably sin ful portion of C reation, whose value in God's eyes was largely a mystery.

But if the ideal of concordia had begun to lose its fo rce, how were men and women to co nceive of the ideal relation between what they viewed as their internal selves (their thoughts, their feel ings, and their convictions) and the broader world' In the sixteenth century, this relation began to be described in rerms of sin cerity. Crucially, rhe rer ms concordia and sin cerity were nor full y synonymo us. Whereas concordia was based on a complex assumptio n about the potentiality of harmo ny throughout the universe - a harmony thar ideally would be reflected in th e way the individual C hristian modeled him or herself on the image of God, the sincere id eal co uld not appea l, at leas r not for long, to the im age of God within the individual person. To be sure, for Luther, grace to some degree substituted - at leas t in rbe elect - for th e med ieval ideal of simifitudo (likeness). But, in general, rhe sincere idea l co uld not appea l to a common notion of the internal self. O nce rhe idea of similarity or li ke ness berween God and rhe human person had been ruptured, it became in creasin gly difficult to express a commo n Christian ideal. A particular person's actions and words were viewed as expressing something far more limited: the internal, particular, and even unique self within. However, nor all writers held that one's words and deeds should be a genu'ine represen tation of one's beliefs or feelings at all times. As we have seen, the Renaissance period is largely defin ed by the ascendancy of a doctrine of prudence that held rhe con trary: that there were numero us occasions on which particular men and wom en should conceal what is in thei r minds and hearts .

N onetheless, in both discussions of sincerity and cou nsels of prnd ·n e, ;:i new understanding of rhe human person emerged - one rh ar pl :i< <'<I 1;1<'. 11 n s1r ·ss on the internal self as agent or subj ec l, as <lirecro r of 0 11 c',, w•11 1I·.. 111il , l , .,d ~ . /\11d alrhouah the Protesta nt arrack on 1hc 111 ·div v: d vi ew .. 1 il11 111 111 1111 <" ,1 r ·pr · sl'nl:11i n n, howt'Vt'I' fl:i w<·d , of 1l w d ivi1 1 · w.t, nnl v 11111 I'''"' 111 11.1 1l1 .1ot V<'I / nl 1'1 1' i111l1 v1cl 11. il , 11 i" 111 111 1·1l wlt"·" 1 ll'. 11 111 ,11 ol 11 ,I, I' • 1111111 11 111 11 1 1111 11 .. 111 1.!1 1,il 111 il11I 111 11 '., Ill<< 111.I 111 11. 1c1 1l .. w1ol 1 11 11 111111 1 111 111 11.t I • II ol 11111 110>1 11 \ lh l

I< ' l'ION

ONE : THE IMPACT OF HUMAN ISM

W hat was novel abour sixreenth-cernury views of th e self was the new under1.1 11d ing of the relation of one's rhougbts and feelings to o ne's words and actions.

111 1he one hand, Renaissa nce writers, especially by the sixteenth century, placed 111·w emphasis on differences between individuals. On rhe other, in overturn in g 1lil' medieval idea l of prudent restraint on on e's emotion s, Protesra n t reforme rs 1.1w a new legitim acy to the expression of one's emorions - an express iveness of 11 fo1 gs that would, increas ingly, be subsumed under rhe ide<il of sincerity. l 111 her, Calvin, and other early Protestant reformers pl ayed a pivotal rok in 111il 1d:i ring this new co ncern with since rity. Luther was especially forceful in his 111 11 ., t· of this virtue in his ' Preface to the Psa lm s.' wh ich he published in his ' 11 1111:1 11 Bible of 1528. Th e Book of Psalms, Luther argued , far surpassed rht· li ves iii •,,1i11ts and other mora l tales because it 'prese rves, not the trivial and ordinary il<111 g., .~aid by the sa ints, bu t their deepest and nobles i: utterance., , those whic h 111 )' used when speakin g in full earnest and all urge ncy to God . Ir nor on ly tel ls 11 wh:it they say abo ut their work and conduce, bur also lays bare their hcans I 111 enables us to see into their hearts and u ndersrn nd the nature of rhe ir 1l1111 11.,l11 s.' Especially noteworthy is the degree to which Luth er's end orsemen t of 11111·1i1y is linked to a new valuing of th e hum an passions: l ,

11 11 h11 man heart is like a ship on a sto rmy sea driven abo ut by winds blowin g 11111 11 .di four corn ers of heaven. ln one man, there is fear and anxiety abo11r 111IJH' lllli ng disaster; another groans and moans at all the surroundin g ev il. One 111111 111 i11glcs hope and presumption out of the good forwne ro which he is l111il 111 g f(Jtward; and another is puffed up with a confid ence and p leasure in 11 ! 111Dc nr possessions. Such storms, however, reach us to speak si nce rely and 11 11tl ly, :ind make a clean breast. [Sofche stunnwinde aber feren rnit ernsl reden iii 1/111 l11Tss offenen, und den grund eraus schutten. ] For a man who is in the 1 1111 tJ I f":1r or di suess speaks of disaster in a quite different way from one who 1 iill 1'd wi1h happiness; and a man who is filled with joy spea ks and sings abo ut 11 '1'1 1 111 ('~S quire differently from one who is in the grip of fear. T hey say rhat 111 ti .1 ~n r row i ng man laughs or a happy man weeps, his laugh ter and his 111 11 1; do nor come from the heart. In other words, these men do not lay • 1, 111 ' Pl':tk of things wh ich lie in, the bottom of th ei r hearts.

1 11 I , l ,11 1lt n's view of rhe proper relation of the emotions to bu man action ' I • 111 ..,,ivl· ncss m<irks a rad ical departure from Aquinas's ethics, which had 1 1 ti, ii 111 prudrn cc and reason to restrain the passions and emo tions in the 11q 1111 · 11 1 l111111 :1 n :1crs and speech. To Luther, earnes r speech found its model in 1, 11, 1d ,i1· il1 c I kh rew Psa lms - an ideal reiterated in rhe writings of Calvin.

or

,, 1. 1 ~ l1 i ()l1i11 v nf' 1h . id ·;d prud ence and the emergence of rhe sincere '11 l111tl1 W(IVV 11 . 1 ~ 1w1l 1hr ·:ids amon g man y - into the complex web of il 1,11 ll'd, i11 iii · H. • 11. 1i .~s: 1 1 1 t;l' p -riod , to ilw di scovery of the individu al, 111111 1 11 1l11 11111 if',< '111 · 1,1 :. i11 u ·ri1 y is 1l:1nic11l :1rly r ·v ·: ding. i-;or, unlike I., 1 j,,, 11 111 1".11 1l 11 11 1. !11 11 :11' "' .. i111 ili1 11< I<· h ·1wcr1 1 ( ;<>d :111d 1h · l1u111 :111 11 11 il11 11111 11111,J ,11101 I., 11\11•II il l! 111',ll I .11111 1111 • 111111', 11 1', <Ill ti ll' 11(111'1 , Ill 111 1tl 110 1d °7ltll 111Ill' ' " 1,, " " . 11 I" ( ~ 11 1· 11 111 11 1il1.tl 11l l1111 11 i111 1·

THE RE N AISSAN CE J N EURO PE: A READER

between the heart and the tongue, but the heart was now viewed nor as a microcosm of a grea ter whole bur rather as an individu al entity, which, while perhaps similar ro other hearts in its proclivity to sin and ro self-deception, was above all characterized by its own irreducible individuality, its particular desires and affections that set it aparr from other person s. Luthe r's image of the diverse passions (fea r, anxiety, hope) of men at sea, rossed about ' by winds blowing from all fo ur corners of heaven,' Lmdersco res this new se nse of individual ity. In Loci communes [Common p!ttces], Melanchthon was more ex plicit: 'we see that in some char;icters, so me :tffections rule, and th at in oth er person s, orhers hold sway.

Each is dra wn by his ow n des ire.' Similarly, Montai gne emphasized that he was writing not of men in general but of 'a parricubr one.' In a world cut off both from a communion based on similitude with God and an implicit anthropological identi ty with other C hristians, even the most sin cere individual could appeal to no truth greater rhan that based on his or her fee lings, emotions, [Jass io ns, or affections. As an idea l, therefore, sincerity may have seemed to preserve so mething of rhe traditional medi eva l concern with the need rn bring expression and behavior into harmony with o ne's intern al beliefs. Jn reality, chi s harmon y was profoundly limited , or individu alistic. It reached our precariou sly from an individual sp eake r's or writer's he<1rt. One's language, therefore, may have resona ted with th e feel ings of a friend o r lover, or perhaps, fleetingly, with those of one's readers. Writing of hi s fri e ndship with La Boetie, fo r exa mple, Montaigne observed that their very souls had communicated with one another 'to the very depths of ou 1 hearts. ' But ultimate ly, no matter how si ncere one was, such expressions, precisely because rhey were based on te elings and emotions, were unable to establish consensus or a sen se of comrnuniLy Where God once was, the individual now stood alone, faced with an in creasingly complex dilemma of not knowing if those whom one add ressed would ever understand one's deepes t feelings, concerns, or hopes .

The discovery of th e individual was to a large degree, therefore, the result of fundamental shifrs in the ethical visions of Renaissa nce humanists and Protestant reformers. In fashionin g their reli gious, socia l, even personal identities , Renaissa nce men ;md wom en could draw on rwo distinct, even opposed virtues. On the one hand, there were those who embraced what I have been describing as a Renaissance notion of th e prudential self (a rhetori cal posture d1at subordinated honesty to decorum); on the oth er, there were those who favored the ideal of sincerity (whi ch subordinated decorum to honesty). Guicciardini exposed the conflic t between these t\VO virtues in his Ricordi: 'Frank sincerity,' he wrote, 'is a quality much extolled among men and pleasing ro everyone, while simulation [simulazione], on the contrary, is detested and condemned. Yc1 ((ir :1 111:1 11\ self: simulatio n is of the two by far the more useful; sinccri1 y [rl'llli1,fl 11•1!(li1 q• r:ith cr to th e in te rest of others.' To be sure, for the ovc rwhcl111i1 11', 111 ,q111 11 1, lil1 • w, " lived in th e gmy ar ·ash ·1 wc,· n, as Jlolo 11ius's "(>111i.~ ·I iii ! l t111 1!1 ·1 ;111'1'1 1 l 111 l11 1d1 " 1>\>l 01111' 1t•111i1ul1'<I I .11· 11 1'' 111 lw 111 11· 1n l1i 1m vli" li1 i1 ,,i .,., ,,, ·1 • 111 I il 111 11 1'. l11 •, '"' 111111"111 ' l\111 ili1· 11 11., 11111 l11 1w11 11 1w11 , 11111 11 11i11 1' 1 il 11• 11 111 .. d• I 1"' 111 1 , 111 "' ' I• I Ill I II ii II .1. 1,11 lll ll • 1'· 1111 I I I"" 11 1111 1I I 11 10 1! 11 'I ii 11111111 11 ,1Ii d111

lll N • lN1' : THE I MPACT OF HUMANISM

1 lll'W i11 rhe sixteenth century. For, despite th e very real differences between 1/1 111 , h111li prudenrialism and the sin cere ideal played pi votal ro les in sh apin g 11° I 1 · 1 1.1i .~sance notion of the sel f as an individual a nd expressive subject. It was 1111 ' " ' 11 :t self that could be called upon, as circumstances shifted, to project a I 11ilil1 d 1qircsentation ofirs concerns, its feelings, its beliefa ro the outside wo1·ld 1 111 111 ild them in check, co ncea ling chem. Thi s is nor to say thar what con11q1111,11 ics imagined as the inn er sdf was, as we are ofLo·n inclined ro believe, 11111 1' 111.111 th e ways one chose to represe nr it. eith e1· 1n the city 01· the court.

I 11'111 , 1hc new sense of th e self views the human helllg :ts ~1 ge nr, subjccr, or '11I1111 .1s someone responsible for his or her actions and :1.ssc rrio11s. Moreovn, 11 11\' ·x istence of such a du ality (between prud ence and sin cniry) in Ren:1is"' 1 di ,L o1irse is itself revea lin g. lt provided a kind of ethicil field on which 111 1 11 1·11 and women in this period nego tiated the demands of everyday life.

111! nv1 ·1· 1ime, it sharpened co ntemporary nori ons oF the self as :1 uniqu e, 1111 •I ' Ill lry.

1111 \ l' ll Sl' of particularity or individua.liry emerges with special clari ty in the 1d rvlonu igne. M uch of the scholarship on Mo ntai gne has connected his 1111 d11 1 ~ 0 1t self-knowledge and on th e individual with hi s decision in 1571, at 11•1 11 1° I hirry-eight, to retire from public life an d devote his leisure to th e "I 11 1 hi111sclf - a project h e ultimately rea li-t,es in rhe hsap. 'JO be sure, there 111111 I1 1h:n lends support ro this connection. Monuigne memo1·ia lizcd his 11 1111•111 wi1h a Latin inscription engraved on th e wall of" his srudy; he only 1 l 11•111 med to public service (twice as rnayor and briefl y in 1588 as a go11>111 1he nego tiations between the king and H enri of Navarre in th e co urse I d11 I 11 · 11 ·Ii w:irs of religion); and, in his Essays, he 1·eiter:i ted the value the " 111 pl1L" rc had assumed in the course of his li fe. Indeed, he is perh aps best 111 11 1111 1li c image he created of the individual culti va ting freedo111 entirel y 1 '" 1111 111 Il l hers. 'We must reserve a back shop [arriereboutique] all our own , 11111 11 ·.- . in whi ch to establish our real liberty and our principal ret re:i t and 11111 f, .'' I Inc,' iV1 on taigne continues, 111 •111 1111,u 1 ·o nvc rsario n must be between us and o urselves , an d so private rhat 11' 11111 11.l v ,1,soci:11iun or communication can find a place ... We have a soul 11 1 ' 111 Ii ' 1urncd upon itself; it can keep itself company; it has th e means to 11 ol 111 d 1h,· mean8 ro defend, the means to receive and the means ro give : 11 11111 11·.11 tli:it i11 rhis solirude we shall stagnate in tedious idleness: In so!i/, 111 tft )N -1(11 1hm11/!. ITihullus]. Virtue, says Antisthenes, is content w ith Ii 1!1 1111 11 11 il e,, , without wmds, with o ut deeds.

1 111 1111\ 1111', I , Cr ·1·11l1l:itl makes mu ch of this passage, which he cites from I111 I 11111 11\ 111( H 11.1 n ~ l : 11i1 ) 11. l.i kc 111a ny orhcr commentators, Greenblatt is 111 111111l1l h.11 k 111(1 111 , il w t1 r r i ach1)//fi1;111', rh e pbcc that fl o ri o had translated 1" ' ' ! 111 11 ~1' ,1 11il il l(' 1n1111ill' 11 i.il 11111101:11io ns i1 uni ·ash es. This wo rd, Green11111 1111 I \ 1111j 11 11"' Ill' ol w111ld q i' 11 r :~11 1 i11 111 [h11 ~ in <:ss J, i11 dk ·1 :1 world 11 "' J'i "I " '' ' II 1\ l11 1111 i;111 1p1i11 •.i l•, .1 11110 .11 f1 111 11 1hi •, wn rl cl, hl' is, :11 1111: • 111 111 1 111 111 1, " 11 o 1.11" • , il1 ,11 1·,, 111 ,, -.111 ·.. ,,r .,, 11 i i11 ·.i 11. 11 .il d1 11 .. 111 1, i..

11 1 il11 /.1111//,/1/1 11111 - .li II II j 'I d Ill I 111l, 11111 iil Ill Ill '1 11111 f\ )1 11111 11' 11 11

or

Tl-IE RENAISSANCE IN EUROPE: A READER

individualism or self-fashioning is primarily a co nsequence of the dynamics of an emerging capitalism; the self is implicated in the structures of an economy that would place a supreme value on separating one's private from one's public life.

Yet the emphasis that Greenblatt and other commentarors have placed on the split between the public and the private in Montaigne's writings misses an equally fundamental tension in his thought, namely, Montaigne's deeply felt desire to be both prudenr and sincere. Indeed, we ca n al so read the Essap and therefore Montaigne's own self-fashionin g as an effort ro negot iate the tensions between these two ideals. Montaigne's praise of sincerity applies ro both spheres, just as bis own sense of the importance of prudence does. This does not prevem him from condemning prudence in the sense of needless dissembling and dissimulati on (though he more often uses this term in the more traditional sense of a kind of practical reaso n) , nor does it mean that he is himself fully sincere. But it does imply that Monrnigne's sense of self is largely shaped by his consciousn ess of the degree to which the press ure to disse mbl e can conflict with the ideal of sincerity.

The desire for, as well as the impossibility of, sincere speech can be seen as one of the threads that ties th e Essctys together. This work gave poignant expression to a widely felt need, in the age of the coun, to find certai n spaces - in one's own room, or library, or fri endships, or writings - to provide a comparatively honest or sincere account of oneself and one's feelin gs . Yer this virtue is not only to be practiced in private, among friends, bur in public as well. Of course, Montaigne himself is anyrhin g but private. H e wrires his book for a broad pub! ic. He never really retrears to rhe back room. And he tells us again and again that he rejects dissimulation. Contrasting his own temperament with others who served, as Montaigne did, as a facilirator in th e political negotiarions, he writes, 'J have an open way ... I do nor refrain from saying anyrhing, however grave or burning ... This is what makes me walk eve rywh ere head high, face and heart open.' 'Ir is painful for me to dissemble,' he remarks, noring rhar this ability is not in his nature. Repeatedly, he lashes out against dissimulation ('among the most notable qualities of this century'). H e favo rs a more direct, a more sincere speech. Bur 'as for this new-fangled virtue of hypocrisy and dissimulation, which is so highly honored ar present,' he writes, 'I mortally hare it; and of all vices, I know none that testifies to so much cowardice and baseness of heart. It is a craven and servik idea to disguise ourselves and hide under a mask, and not ro dare to show ourselves as we are ... A generous heart sho uld not belie its thoughts; it wants to reveal itself even to its inmost depths [jusques au dedans] .'

Un like the Protes tant theologians who connected sincerity (sindrite, ernst reden, sinceritas, A ufrichtigkeit) with the need to express on ·'s c.: 111utions, the Catholic and stoic Montaigne based his ethic of sincc;:rit y <HI ilw 11 t'<"d 11i he tnt l· to one's natu re or tem perament. ln doing so, he took .~<111 lt' 1.J, . 1 ~ 111 1 :11 L1i tiq11i11 1•. the.: CO LI rtl y ethos th . R ·n:1 is.q nc ·:

or

Nol\ 1111 111\ \'·"' I w11 1t!il 1.11111 1 \11 111 ,1i\ .J ,..,.,111< 111.\ 111<li • 1 11111.lt ".I 11ilil111 1• I 1il111 11 1\111 I 111111 11111 I" ,,1 , 111 11 11i\ ol ... 11111

11

11 111 lN 1l N F.:

Tl-I E IMPACT OF HUMANISM

27

• 11111 g 111e sincere and outspoken [entier et descouvert] wirhom consideration '" ' 11 tl,,.rs; and it seems to me that I restrain myself a little less whenever ir 111 tlrl \,l. appropriate to restrain myself more, and that l react aga insr rhe respect I , , ·1· \111 g mwing more heated. Ir may be, too, that Iler myself foll ow my nature 1111 l.1<k 111" an. When I display to great men the same extreme freedom of tongue • t I lll'. 1ring that I exercise in my own house, I feel how much it inclin es roward 111 .J i' 11t' t ioJJ and incivility. But besides the fact that I am made tb:i r way, I have "''' 1 "llJl jlk enough mind to sidestep a sudden qu es tion a nd escape ir by so me I." I •1'. <1r 10 invent a truth, or a good eno ugh memo ry ro rera i n so mct h in g rhw; 11 '1111·d .. ind certainly nor enough assurance to maintain it; and I pur on a I .I I l.1« ' liccause of weakness. Therefore I give myself up to being candid ;rnd d 11• ,,1y111 g what 1 think, by inclination and by reaso n, leav in g ir ro rorrun c 1111k tl1 e o utcome.

I 11 1 li1 » pro ject - especially in the essays written befo re r580 - m :iy h:1ve had 1 111111 oi" sclf-fashioning, but as Montaign e grew older, he was less co nfident 111 il 1i li1 y Lo shape himself. 'Others form man.' he wrote in <lll essay of 1585.

I 1 II iii l1i1 11, and portray a partirnlar one, very ill -formed, who m I sho uld really .I, 11)' dillc rent from what he is ifI had to fashion him ove r aga in. Bu t no w • 1l11 Jt L'' Ii>be sure, the tension in this semence is enormous. Mo ntaigne does • 1.11 111 or 1:1shion himself, he tells us - only to add rh ar this is so methin g he i\ 11 1d1 1 done. Bur we need not conclude a conuadi ction or an inco nsistency.

I 1111 1 gtll' \ 11ndcrstanding of self allows for a complex interplay betwee n nature •I 1il t111 v: indeed, it was part of Montaigne's humanist strategy to lin k his 11 I. • 1 111 1li 11 g of individualism with his view of nature. 'Narn ral in cl in ation s,' I ,j, • 1v1 ti . 'gain assistance and strength from education; bur rb ey <1 re sca rcely I. 1\111 11•,n l and overcome.' 'We do not root out these origin al qualiti es,' he 1111111 11ii , 'we cover them up, we conceal them.' And then he provides - perhaps 111 1111 di ., in g ·nuously - a compelling (though equ<1l ly contrad icto ry) "'i d' ' I .11i11 is like a native rongue to me; I understand it better than Fren ch; 11 1 11 1 1111 t I' w:1 rs I h;1ve nor used it at all for speaking or writing. Yer in sudd en 111111<• \' tno rions, into which I have fallen two or three rimes in my life ii tl1 1111 wl1rn I saw my father, in perfect health , fall back imo my arms in I I 1.1v · :ii ways poured out my first words from the depths of my emrails I 11 11 1 t 4"1 11 11.· s11 rgi ng linrh and expressing herself by force , in the fa ce of lon g I 1 11, 11, .,r co11rse , 1he rnnrradicrion lies in the fact that a particular Jan' 11111 ,1 p.11'1 ol" 11 :11 11 re hu r rarher of culture, something taught and instilled.

1.1111 111;111·\ pni 111 is rat lier obvious. There are multiple layers in the make' 1•11 111 1il .11 p v r~ on: :1 11:1111r:il temperament, a cluster of (often conflicting) 1 111i111. 11 h11 g11:1g-. a parti cular family <1 nd education , as well as 11 1• ' 1111 l11 1t ,il , ·,1ll i. il , .111 d ·1ilt11r:tl lc>rc ·s - all of rh ese go into shaping us, 111111 11 \ l111 w1 .11 ', /\t111 1din gl .wva rc 11 ·v -rpurel y rhcrol es we play, though i\ 1. 1111 il1 t! i11·. w!Jt• 11 M11111.1i r 11• l1 i1 11sdf :1·lrnowkd g 'S , that we ca n 11 11 1 11\L , ' l'/11 11•/111/r• 11·111/1/ /i/1/J" " ;11111 .' lie w1l1 1·, , ·i1i11 g l'e1ro11i11s, :111d 11 I 11111 ' 1 1.I I \ 11111 1•,111 il1il1 , 11111 11111 "" il11 I"'"'" ,I 1i.111<l\V1'd I \1. 11.111 1'1 ', 1 iii '" 1 I 1111 \ 'I'll' 1111111 ''' 11111 1 111 11 111 ,d 1 1 11 d , ·\I 111 • . 11111 111 w\1 11 1·.

THE RENA ISSANCE IN EURO PE: A READER

foreign wh at is our very own . We ca nnot distin guish the skin fro m the shi n . It is enough to make up OL1r face, w ithout making up our bea n [poictrine].

The construction - above all , Montaigne's insisten ce that our mask need not shape our interi or self - is sharpl y at odds with Greenblatt's view that, in the Ren;i issa nce period, 'there is no laye r deeper, more auth entic, than theatrica l selfreprese ntarion .' To b - sure, Mo ntaigne's Essel/S often poinr to the preval ence of such self-fashioni ng in Re naissa nce cu ltu re. Bur he also managed to sugges t rhe ex istence of a co mpl ex array of o th er forces that shape our identities - forces often inev itabl y in rcn sion or in con fli ct with th e roles we choose to play. Thar he was able to do so sre ms, I beli eve, from th e growin g im porta nce placed on the questi ons of prudence and sincerity in the Rena issa nce. For both these virrues emph,1s ized th e need for the individ ual to fashion rh e pub li c se lf jiwn within, to know when it was mosr <1ppropriate to prcsenr in one's ex pressed life a refl ec tion of 'true' feelings (as in the case of th e Protestants) or 'true' nature (as in the case of Mo ntaign e) or when, by co mras c. it was more appropri ate to proj ect or w wea r a mask, ro dissemble - in shorr, w exe rcise pruden ce in one's affairs, wh eth er pub li c or private .

Alrh ough a precise identi fica tio n of th e forces that led to the invention of sincerity and the refashi o nin g of prudence li es beyo nd th e scope of this essay, it is ckar rhat histo ri ca l di scuss ions of th e eme rgence of the self as subject - what Burckha1dt long ago ca lled 'the developmen t of the individual' - cannot and should not be co nfi ned to one parti cu lar hi stor ical mom ent or context, especiall y when such a framewo rk is co nceptualized as a mon olith ic, closed, or total izi ng system. Indeed , if we stan d back from New Histo ricist theo ries about selffas hi o ning, we see clearly that their analyses are too often developed in precisely such a limited fas hion, with insufficienr attenti on to broader ideas and voca bularies within Europea n culture. This is nor ro say th at More's argum ems wi th Tynda le, for exam ple, o r Shakes pea re's dramas do not comman d our attention.

Much recenr histo ri c :il scholarshi p has benefired from renewed attention to rhe eve nr an d the anecdote, reinvigoratin g historical writings that had become, all too often , bland and rather predictable social-sciemific reco nsuunions of the pasc. Bur we oughr nor to allow a fascinat ion with grea t works or even with the unusual, th e strange , and the anecdo tal to obscure the underlying complexities of longer-term historical changes and their relation to the moral or the cultural life. This is nor merely a theoretical claim. To the co ntrary, the evidence I have prese nted concerning both rhe refashioning of prudence and the invention of sincerity - albei t preliminary and necessarily tentative - points to a gradual tendency, beginning in the fifteenth bur accelerating in the sixteenth century, to view the self as an agent or subj ect and in in creasingly individualiz ·d term s. The idea ls of prudence and sincerity, th;i t is, were nor fashio ned HI n11 c p.111 j, 11L11 111 0111 en1 or even in one panicu lar context but devclopcd . rnd11.ill1• 11 \ 11 ii i 11u 1sc oi' st·vcra l g n · rnrion~. I., .I h·q111 th is 11 ·rs1w ·1i vc, il 1<· i1l1 11111 11 111 .i1 . l1 1111111 <.·1, :1, M11n· .111d ' l'v 11d.il1 · w1·11· 1101 ,i 11q 1l 1 (1 11111i11 11' 111 '' I", i1,, ,, I 111 I 1 1 1h 1d1 •111 i 11 iJ,J, I 1d1111 ii 111.J 1111111 11 ii 11111 1'" ·o1 11 11 , I '. il 11 '11111 . 11 »I iii 11p11111 l q Il l I 11,11

1

I 11 1>N

O NE: T HE IMPACT Of HUM AN ISM

29

111 1il .1 r society. To the contrary - even in rhe absence of direct ev idence - th ei r 11w' of the self and its relative autonomy musr have emerged rhrough th eir expo1111 i11 their educa rio n, their reading, rhei r conversa tion - to new vocabularies 1111 1 l1:1d , in th e Renaissance period, begun w in vest the se lf wirh a new se nse of 1il 1p 1iv ity and , above all , in an in creasingly frag mented culture, with :1 he1ghr111 ti M·nse of individuali sm.

111 h ·clear, th ere is no thing :1bo ut this approach rha t is 11 eccssari ly in compariJ,J, wi1h that of rhe New Histo ric ists, whose writings ha ve done mu ch ro illu 111111.i ic 1he salient role thar political. wc ial, and cultuul in stitu tions played in 11 l" " f!, th e self Bur rhe indi vidual so shaped w:1s not a blank rablct o r tex t on 111111 ' 11 ch institu tio ns or in deed certain fundament:il te n s i o n ~ o r conHicr.' in 1111 11il 111rc (politi cal and 1-el igious) wen: ' in sc ribed. ' ·lo the conr r:1ry, rhc co nrcxt ii 1lll1 1111d in the Renaissa nce world en sured rh ar rhc norion of 1)e rso 11 w:t.'> :llly111111 11111 blank. In creas in gly widely diffused humanisr edu cat iona l practices, 1d 111g child-rearing th eo ries rhar stressed <l sensiti vity ro each parrirnlar child 's 111 11J 11111s an d feelings, a deve lop in g model ofcomp:111 io11are marriage, Pro tes tant 11111111' 1hat gave warrant to both ex pressiveness an d plain .~ p cak i ng, the incrcas1 li10:1d diffusion of books, new practi ces or read in g, and even the comIH1 li11 •. 11ion of the mirror - these and many other facto rs, non..: of whi ch ca n I 1 d11,cd ro one uni ~1 i ng cultural o r social ex planation , were parr of th e 11qil1' ~c l of interactions through whi ch Renai ssa nce men :rnd wo men we re I, 'I" ii wi1h :1 new awareness of the se lF as subj ect, :1s an i11di v1dual. Th e fo sh111111• i d se lves in the Renaissance world , as ind eed rhe fashi onin g of se lves in ii" 1 11 111 ·~ :111d places, is overdetermin ed, and is nor reducible ro one particul:1 r 11111 111 d i:1l ecric, no matter how powerful or persuasive .

1111 l' ll '11liasis on the broader cultural climate in th e shapin g of rh e self is crucial 1111 1111 r und erstanding of the remarkab le res ili ency of certain aspecrs of se lf~ 1•I 11 1 1hl· Re naissance . T h e Renaissance experience of selfhooJ appea red ro 111 111il ' ocia l and cultural experience. 'Someo ne says to me, ''You don't ex press 11 1II .1, ii " yo u were C icero." "What of it' I am nor C icero. 1 ex press II ,'' Ange lo Poliziano wrote in the late fifteenth century, demonstratin g th e 1n wli i ·h th e self 'Nas seen as something independent , stron g, eve n God11 l >111'\ pas r. one's experiences, one's memories, and one's inn er li fe all marl 1~ pi t · grnwin g an xieties about selfhood or perhaps because of them, men 111111 11 i11 1he IZc'naissance were more than likely to embrace th e humanist Ii'' '11111<11\io 1h:11 vil'wcd rhc self as something autonomou s and willful , ind eed, l11111l 11 11l·111:il, underlying essence or as a building block of human society.

I 111 1• 111 1\1' c>i' prnd cncc and sincerity points ro a sense of interi ority, albei t 1 1111° 1° ii , il t.11 .1 111101 he viewed purely reAectively in relati on to the cultural 111 11 1 1p.11 1i11il.11' 111:1·l' an d peri od hut w:1s in fact relatively immune ro the ' 1d 1il111 l1 11•1i1 .ii 1111\ ., .1 11.J 1<1ta li ;i,ing 11ress url's of the church or the monarchy ,, 1"'1 1il1 l,111 ,111d ()111 •1 Nl'w I li ~ 1 ori c i s 1 s lia v · sc ·n :is dererminin g if nor as I II 111 1• 11 111111 11 Ill tl 11 l11 111 1. 11 in1 1 or l {C' 1 t. 1i ,~: 11 1 . ' idcnt i1i 1..·s.

I I' 11 1111 il 11 , 1111., 11111.111 1 11 1111; 11 1 11111 111 1111· p1 i11 11 ol' il w fc11'( ·s tl1 :11 sh:1p ·d >l 11 1111 • •I I• dl11 1• lo 1I I l,11 • 11 111 I 1111.!1 l'. i.llld i11 1\ 1il ilt 1· P<l'o'oiJ )iiil)' 111"

30

THE RENAISSAN CE IN EUROPE: A READER

agency, dissent, and opposition [. . .] . T he Renaissance self was something grea ter than the sum of one's social roles. Indeed, the growing importance of the ideals of prudence and sincerity - as well as the tensions betv1een them - made it increasingly possible in the Rena issa nce and in the early modem period generally co view a particular person as a com plex individual, who was self-conscious about the degree to which th e inner self, now viewed as largely cut off from God, directed the outer, public self in its daily inreracrions with one's fellow citizens, subj ec ts, or courtiers. At the time of the French Revolution, the repub lica n opponents of the O ld Regime self-co nscio usly celebrated the sincerity (or th e rransparency) of their speech and actions.

A historical account of the Renaissance discovery of the individual, therefore, does no r need to embrace eirh er the essenrialism of Burckhardt or the narrowly sy nchronic and totalizin g historicism of Greenblatt. The primary cultural facto rs in the making of Renaissance individualism were the em erge nce of humanism and the development of Protestantism, both of which d eeply problematized the relation of what contemporaries viewed as the internal self to o ne's words and actinns . T he primary social factors were the rapid expansion of urban life and the burgeoning size of the co uns . The demise of the id ea l of concordia and the emergence of a new understand ing of prudence, as well as the constr uct ion of the si ncere ideal, point to a ma jo r historical shift in Renaissance Europe. It was, in fact, a religious or ethical revo lution that played a pivotal role in foster in g an eme rgin g ethic of individualism , at least in the sense that th e individual ca m e to see him or herself as a unique enti ty, largely responsible for his or her words and deeds, and capable of either concea ling or revealing his or her feelings and beliefs as circumstances dictated . To be sure, such an individual was capable of ass umin g many guises, from the benevolent humanism of Juan Luis Vives ro the aggressive individualism of Renaissance despots . That such an individual cou ld rake on narrowly self-interested , self-aggrandizing, or even destructive attributes should surprise no one. Burckhardt himself was deeply ambivalent abo ut the consequences of 'the development of the individual' and should not be seen - as he too often is - as celebratin g it.

Finally - though a proper investigation of these issu es must be done elsewhere - it is clear that the questions Burckhardt raised about the discovery of the individual are not exclusively a matter for intellectual or literary hisrory. To the contrary, a grasp of the shifting nature of the self in Renaissance Europe should be at the h earr of our smdies of the social, political, econ omic, and cu ltural histories of the period . This is not to claim that the self was prior to larger structural fo rces or that the self can be viewed in isolation from them. Nor is it to claim that the Renaissance self always emailed a sense of subjectivity and a related sens<' of individualism . T he Renaissance world was profoundly divers" :ind iris lik ·l y that we can locate many different constructions of id ·nrit y wi 1!1i11 it. l\ur it i,, my hope char this essay w ill enliven deba te abour rhc ·1111111 1111·1 ·.il'.11ifl(. tll ' t: ol Bu rckh ardr's qw.:s rion s. 1:o r merely ro :isk rhnn i .~ 10 11 •/11'.1 t• 1 ii11 11 11 1111 "· lf'( 1111 .

10 crC1ct' i1 , l'Vl'l1 10 ' l':IS<' i1 :is ii Wt ' I'(' !11 vi1 ·wi 111 " II I " " /111 11 11 111 1 iii 11 111 J' 111 i1 11J. 11 1111111 I , ,Il l ,ll' lll<l.l t 11 1J1 ,11 lt ",1d1·., i111 I II olol 1 Ill I 1l1 !11 !1 1.J j/ 11111 Ill II q111 1 11 •. l11 ii I"' Ifill 1> / ii,. 11,i >, 1 I I In IJ 1 111 1 tol ii i 111 .I 1111• i ii 111 11

I

lli\ N llN I'. : THE JMPACT O F HUMANISM

}I

111001 11111 id entities is, after all, far from a trivial matter; it goes to core questions I • il 11l ,, lit erature, philosophy, and religion - questions chat have emerged as 111 1 ti i11 many of the current discussio ns of both the value and the limits of 111. lt 1d 11. dism. <I I

1111 k1·y 1cx r is Srephen

J.

Creenblar r, Rcnai"-,·a11C<' SelfFr1shio11ing: From Moff to Sht1!<1·-

lf'r'1111· (( :hi cago, 1980).

11 111 h.1\' I Mascuch, Origins of t!Jr• !11di11idualis1 Self Autohiogrttphy 1111d Sel(ldcntil)' i11 I 118/r111rl, 1591-q91 (Sranfo rd , Ca lif.. 1996), 14.

I 11,,H·I Trilling, Sincerity and A111hmtici1y (Ca 111 bricl gc, Mass ., 197 1), 2. Trilling\ o bsc r1111 •11 ' 011 rh e histo ry of rhis wo rd de ri ved fro111 hi s reading of rh c rntri es \ in cnc' .1nd 11 n n i1y' in rh e Oxfind English Dictionary. Non et heless, my preli 111 i nary 1nc:1rch in ro 1111 l11\11lly of rhis rerm (in English, Ccrm;111 , La 1i11 , and rh c Ro111ance bngu:1gcs) Lugdy 1111 1/11 111' 'li il lin g's point.

All1cr1 F~a bil Jr 'The Significance of "Civic Humanism" in h Interpretation of the Italian Renaissance' n1 11 co. lrorn Renaissance Humanism Foundations, Forms and Legacy, Volume 1, lh11111111is111 in Italy, ed. Albert J. Rabil, Jr, University of Pennsylvania Press, l 1l1 il111 lr.lpl1ia, 1988, chapter 7, pp. 141-79.

11 1di l. 1.,sic anal ysis of the Renaissance, Jacob Burckhardt asserted th ar both 1 '11·111 .111d d ·spot ic states indifferently produced 'the indi vidual ' who emerged 111 111 ~ 1 tinll' 111 fourteen th-century Italy: for rhese men we re characterized il l <'I',\' hy their learning, their indifference to politics, and th eir cos.!11 11 1P1111 . The cL1ss of men known as humanists, intended by this descrip' 11 dvvot ed :ihove all to classical - Greek and Latin - languages and I11 l l:i ~s ic:d culture they found all rhey needed for the expression of 11 11 1111 1 •,i dl'( I 1 1crsonaliries. Burckhardt admitted that it was above all others 1°11 11 1111 •., 'wl10 111ade antiquaria n interests one of the chief objectives of 11 1 ' ,111d 1!t:i1 'till')' were of peculiar significa nce during the period of '' 1111111 11 111 · hq1,i'1111ing oF the fiftee nth century, since it was in them that 11111 1 111 111 ~ 1 , !tnw ·d 11 s,·lf prac tically as an indispensable element in d aily li fe.'

1 1 • 11 ii I', ·n ·r:!l itl ll.\ ah cr 13urckhardt, interpretation of Renaissance "" 111 111qil1,1, i·1. ·d it :is an :111riquarian movement more or less diffused 11 111111 1 11 dr. l'l1 t· r.1 ·1 tl 1:1 1 ir first cxtHessed itself mosr forcefully in Florence Ill I il1 0 11( 111 n l 1!1 . r1r1 ·c111li ' ·nt 11ry and that Florence was a republic ra ther 1 1 I" 11 11• 11 . , 1.1 1 ' , JjiJ 11 p1 I ·:1d :111 yn1iv ro ra ise the question of whether there 111 j,, 11 1111 11111 11 1·{i io1 1 l1ct wl.·~·n l1111 n:1n 1sm a11d Florentine polity and, if so, d1 1 d 11 ,I. 11111111111 1d l111111.111 i.. 11 1 ·" :1 in11v1·m c111 indill'c rc111 ro poli rics might " 11 1.. 111 1111 11l d11 .. I. I. I ' 1'111 11 111.. 1 p11wc1i'1il 1'1·1i n·s ·111 :i 1i v\.'.S 1l ivic lJ f ll 111 l11 11 r I ll I l1 i11 I I ' , 1\ 1111 11 \\', l 'o 1l 1o 1 1.1ollo .,I l111111.111 i', lll .11111 il'o lll<l'<i 111 !11 il11 11 11 r l1 11 111 111 I" 1111111111 1111111 111'.11 1\ ,1•.o 111 11.11 111 l\111 1111 "1'1 111

Whitlock, Keith, Ed. The Renaissance in Europe. New Haven; London: Yale UP, 200.