Reviews for Portable Renaissance Reader

The average rating for Portable Renaissance Reader based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-06-29 00:00:00 Charles Ernest I so enjoyed The Medieval Reader that this seemed a natural follow-up. The last fifty or so pages of monk wonks debating the nature of free will I could have did without. Still, it was not as difficult reading as the vivisection of a dog described in detail by Andreas Vesalius. I enjoyed the rest. One bit is ready for treatment by Monty Python. In The Perfect Gentleman, Giovanni della Casa seeks to lay down the guideline for the Medieval man who gives a damn. In these pre-plumbing days that includes knowing how to handle stink" ... when a man chances to see, as he passes the way (as many times it happens) a loathsome thing that will make a man to cast his stomach, to turn unto the company and show it them. And much worse I like it, to reach some stinking thing unto a man to smell unto it, as it is many a man's fashion to do with importunate means, yes, thrusting it unto their nose, saying, "Foh, see I pray you, how this does stink," where they should rather say, "Smell not unto it, for it has an ill scent " As a music enthusiast, I can appreciate this from "Music and the Courtier" from Baldassare Castiglione: Do you not then deprive our Courtier of music, which does not only make sweet the minds of men, but also many times wild beasts tame, and whoso savours it not, a man may assuredly think him not to be well in his wits While I have read this before, I am still awed by the oversharing and anatomical confusion of Girolamo Cardano in On Himself and His Life. ...I have discovered, by experience, that I cannot be long without bodily pain, for if once that circumstance arises, a certain mental anguish overcomes me, so grievous that nothing could be more distressing Bodily pain, or the cause of bodily distress in which there is no disgrace'is but a minor evil Accordingly I have hit upon a plan of biting my lips, of twisting my fingers, of pinching the skin of the tender muscles of my left arm, until the tears come Under the protection of this self-chastisement I have without disgracing myself I am by nature afraid of high places, even though they are extensive, also of places where there is any report of mad dogs having been seen. At times I have been tormented by a tragic passion so heroic that I planned to commit suicide ... It IS my custom to remain m bed ten hours, and, if I am well and of fair and proper strength, to sleep eight hours, in periods of ill health I can sleep but five hours I arise at the second hour of the day insomnia troubles me, I get up, walk around the bed, and count to a thousand many times I also diet, cutting down on my food by more than half At such times make small use of medication beyond a little poplar ointment or bear's grease or oil of water lilies. With this I anoint seventeen places the thighs, the soles o my feet, the cervix, the elbows, the wrists, the temples, the regions of the jugular, heart, and liver, and last of all my upper lip... Cardano was not the only one prescribing. Ambroise Paré in A Surgeon in the Field conjured up a plaster for gunshot wounds: ...I had not yet seen wounds made by gunshot at the first dressing It is true I had read in John de Vigo, m the first book of wounds m general, the eighth chapter, that wounds made by fire did participate of venomosity, by reason of the powder, and for their cure commands to cauterize them with oil of elders scalding hot, in which should be mingled a little treacle And not to fail, before I would apply of the said oil, knowing that such a thing might bring to the patient great pain, I was willing to know first, before I applied it, how the other surgeons did for the first dressing, which was to apply the said oil the hottest that was possible into the wounds, with tents and setons, insomuch that I took courage to do as they did At last I wanted oil and was constrained instead thereof to apply a digestive of yolks of eggs, oil of roses, and turpentine... While I am no painter myself, I enjoyed reading from teh Bob Ross of the 17th Century Karel Van Mander in On Landscape Painting: One should only stipple the smallest tree trunks. Yet before we hasten on to our trees m the foreground, let us climb a way up the steep cliffs, the s moistened with wet lips by the drifting clouds which wash their highest summits In general, their colour is light grey, and often they raise their bare peaks out of the midst of a dense forest of fir trees. See how the stones hang like icicles on the rocks irregular and green with moss, in this waterfall and how the water rushes drunkenly through the twisting paths helter-skelter until it falls below, now you wise serpents of art, see how these mastic trees grow here an how strangely they lie! Who could dream of such a thing!

Review # 2 was written on 2014-11-05 00:00:00 Brett Forrester If the subject interests you at all, this book is incredible, at worst a pretty good find, or redundant. Still, a complete reading is an ambitious and informative project, though I suspect most readers will seek out pieces that speak to them. It took me a couple of months to get through, but in the interim I got a lot of other assorted reading finished, having something nice to fall back on whenever I felt aimless but willing to read. Nevertheless - a fine collection full of big names.