Renaissance Man
Considering such witnesses of the time as Shakespeare Dante Petrarch Michelangelo Machiavelli Montaigne More and Bacon Agnes Heller looks at both the concept and the image of a Renaissance man. The concept was generalised and accepted by all; its characteristic features were man as a dynamic being creating and re-creating himself throughout his life. The images of man however were very different having been formed through the ideas and imagination of artists politicians philosophers scientists and theologians and viewed from the different aspects of work love fate death friendship devotion and the concepts of space and time. Renaissance Man thus stood as both as a leading protagonist of his time one who led and formulated the substantial attitudes of his time and as one who stood as a witness on the sidelines of the discussion. This book first published in English in 1978 is based on the diverse but equally important sources of autobiographies works of art and literature and the writings of philosophers. Although she uses Florence as a starting point Agnes Heller points out that the Renaissance was a social and cultural phenomenon common to all of Western Europe; her Renaissance Man is thus a figure to be found throughout Europe.
