Rinascimento. Mito e Concetto

'Renaissance' is one of the archetypal myths of civilisation and the autobiography of the moderns, but with certain specific characteristics that define its originality: it sinks its roots in reality; it has transformed itself - without ever exhausting its mythical foundation - into a fundamental concept of the philosophy of detailed history in Europe from the xvth century, being identified progressively with the question of 'genesis' and 'characteristics' of what is usually defined as the 'modern world'.
Throwing light on a problem such as this, it is not easy: like in a kind of crescendo, in it evolved themes and motifs of an ethical, civil, aesthetic, political and religious nature in the work of exceptional figures like Voltaire, d'Alembert, Michelet, Burckhardt, Burdach and Gentile. On point however is clear, whereas ancient images of history and European conscience are worn out and fade away: if one wants to understand what the Renaissance was and, at the same time, decipher a value and a meaning from a point of view different from the one given us by a long and glorious tradition, a preliminary survey of the history of historiography is necessary, that can serve to define differences and similarities, perxistences and discontinuities between past and present.
It is to this task the essays collected here are meant to contribute, through a series of investigations into decisive points in the history and historiography of the Renaissance.