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Reviewed by:
  • The European Renaissance in American Life
  • David E. Baum
Paul F. Grendler . The European Renaissance in American Life. Westport: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2006. xvi + 342 pp. index. illus. tbls. $49.95. ISBN: 0–275–98486–9.

Americans like the Renaissance. So concludes distinguished Renaissance scholar Paul F. Grendler in this book every scholar of the Renaissance should read. The European Renaissance in American Life is a work that in less sympathetic hands might have devolved into yet another satire of American middle-class, middle-brow, and middle-mind culture. In Grendler's hands, however, America's love affair with the Renaissance comes off as something more than whimsy, kitsch, or simple goofiness — there are Renaissance weekends where participants attempt to recreate the intellectual energy of the Renaissance, abundant reproductions of Renaissance icons, including hula dancing Davids and mustachioed Mona Lisas, and a guy named Bob Da Vinci, who claims to be Leonardo's brother and threatens to tell the story of the "real" (cover the kids' ears) Renaissance at Renaissance Faires — and emerges as a challenge to those of us who toil daily at revealing, critiquing, deconstructing, or simply understanding the Renaissance, without in the end embracing our own period and arguing for its importance to us, to the advance of learning and to the world we inhabit.

Grendler's book is introduced by a short chapter on the "Real Renaissance," where he quickly rehearses the main points of the Renaissance as scholars would recognize it. The main body of the book is divided into three parts, each de-tailing some aspect of the popular reception of the Renaissance: "Reliving the Renaissance," "Re-Creating the Renaissance," and "The Renaissance in Fiction and Film." In the first part we are treated to a view of Renaissance Faires, Renaissance Weekends, Living Last Suppers, The Renaissance Man (and Woman), and Renaissance Brand Names and Icons. We are quickly convinced by Grendler's evidence that Americans know the Renaissance when they see it, and, as we discover in part 2, where we consider Renaissance Cities and the immanence of Machiavelli in American political and managerial theory, that Americans have some sense of what to do with the Renaissance when they do see it. When we get to the end of part 3, which includes not only sections on novels and film, but a final chapter entitled "Loving and Hating the Renaissance," Grendler tells us why Americans love the Renaissance (and why scholars may not): individualism. For Grendler this explains an attraction that otherwise might astound. The Renaissance is not only a popular historical period with Americans, Grendler notes; it is, for Americans, the most popular period in history. No other period captures America's entrepreneurial outlook, its belief in self-reliance, its worship of invention, and its reverence for individual genius. No other period, Grendler argues, better satisfies America's own self-image; and, he further suggests, the Renaissance itself seems to reciprocate by firing the imagination of no other people like it does that of the Americans. [End Page 1291]

As far as it goes, Grendler's is a terrific book and a wonderful read. There is more to be done with this topic, and Grendler more than acknowledges this. The mountain of evidence Grendler has amassed would fuel several books on this subject, and he all but invites those who are willing to have at it. Those who follow Grendler, if there will be any, in exploring the Renaissance and popular culture, would probably want to look more closely than Grendler does at the broader questions raised by this book, among them what the relationship between scholarly and popular histories of our period should be. Grendler makes clear, but never states outright, a law of popular history: it desires intimacy with its subject. Popular enthusiasts want to recreate, relive, and reenact the past. Popular history must have a material component; it must be corporeal to be real. Professional historians reject this understanding of history outright, and thus we find ourselves in something of a dilemma. As Grendler shows beyond a doubt, Americans love the Renaissance; they just don't love our Renaissance. The challenge, then, is how, or if, to...

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