Interview – Dr Ada Palmer on Myths of the Renaissance
My guest today is Dr Ada Palmer, Associate Professor of Early Modern European History at the University of Chicago and author Inventing the Renaissance: Myths of a Golden Age. I must say I haven’t enjoyed reading a book as much as this one in quite some time. Dr Palmer takes the traditional idea of the Renaissance – that it was a glorious rebirth of reason, artistic mastery and secular thinking after a centuries long dark age – and shows this is almost entirely nonsense. She then takes the reader on a remarkable tour of the people, places and periods we can associate with “the Renaissance” and shows – as usual – the real history is so much more complex, varied and interesting than the pop history cliches. It’s a highly engaging, chatty and personable read – she manages to make some very complex history rather fun.
So it was no surprise to find Ada Palmer is as much fun in person as she is on the page. We had a long discussion about the common misconceptions about the concept of “the Renaissance”, the myth of “the Dark Ages” and the misunderstanding of how secular and non-religious these people and periods were or were not. So I hope you enjoy my conversation with Dr Ada Palmer as much as I did.
7 thoughts on “Interview – Dr Ada Palmer on Myths of the Renaissance”
I have long imagined a paper I’ll probably never find time to make. It’s theme would be nostalgia in Italy for its past. I’d expect to begin with the powerful movement among ordinary people of which we find evidence as early (at least) as the tenth century. It wasn’t unified – some longed for the republican era – life before emperors – others for the imperial era . I’d look a whether this mightn’t be the seed of what we have come to describe in its later expression as the Guelf-Ghibelline division. In that perspective, Dante is picking up on a popular movement already centuries old, and I’d argue that it’s co-opted and emasculated to become a fashionable nostalgia among the social and literary elite – everyone was hunting Roman works, and Poggio cashed in on it, but was neither the first nor the most prolific book-‘finder’. But of course like most initial possibilities, the business of investigation might as easily evaporate as elaborate the initial possibility.
Also – that image of the woman carrying a bag of gold etc. wasn’t imagination alone; it was an imaginative transfer of a recent phenomenon – the ‘Pax Mongolica’ from which Italian merchants had so much benefit though, like the Pax Romana, was the ‘peace’ created in the aftermath of unbridled slaughter.
It seems to be a widespread trope indicating a time of peace and order. In Ireland it was said that the reign of [insert high king here] was wonderful because a beautiful young woman wearing a large gold brooch once walked from one end of Ireland to the other, and was not robbed or molested in any way.
This was excellent! Ada’s enthusiasm was matched by the breadth and depth of her knowledge. Being from the UK I would have liked some comments about the situation in Britain? Especially regarding the development of the scientific method? Keep up the good work. I really appreciate your site even though (shock horror) I am not an atheist!
Blast it!
Another book to buy.
Great interview and I would have loved to had Dr. Palmer as a lecturer.
Who is the Scipio something or other mentioned about 58 minutes who went to the stake for defending sola fide? I can’t make out the last name well enough to do a search that turns up anything and would like to know more about the geezer.
As you might already suspect, I personally don’t think that the scientific method was created in the early seventeenth century but apart from that a stimulating and challenging interview. The book is ordered!