This book is the first step towards the development of a comparative history of the humanities. Specialists in philology, musicology, art history, linguistics, literary theory, and other disciplines highlight the intertwining of the various fields and their impact on the sciences. This first volume in the series The Making of the Humanities focuses on the early modern period. Different perspectives reveal how the humanities developed from the ‘liberal arts’, via the curriculum of humanistic schools, to modern disciplines. The authors show in particular how discoveries in the humanities contributed to a secular world view, pointing up connections with the scientific revolution. The main themes are: the humanities versus the sciences; the visual arts as liberal arts; humanism and heresy; language and poetics; linguists and logicians; philology and philosophy; the history of history. Contributions come from a selection of internationally renowned European and American scholars, including Floris Cohen, David Cram, and Ingrid Rowland. The book offers a wealth of insights for specialists, students, and those interested in the humanities in a broad sense.

Table of Contents:
Table of Contents - 6 Introduction: Historiography of the Humanities - 8 I. The Humanities versus the Sciences - 16 How Comparative Should a Comparative History of the Humanities Be? - 18 Bridging the Gap - 40 Music as Science and as Art - 60 II. The Visual Arts as Liberal Arts - 74 Representing the World - 76 Ficino, Diacceto and Michelangelo’s - 108 ‘Signs that Signify by Themselves’ - 134 III. Humanism and Heresy - 162 Giordano Bruno and Metaphor - 164 ‘In Erudition There Is No Heresy’ - 178 IV. Language and Poetics - 198 Humanism in the Classroom, a Reassessment - 200 Origins and Principles - 232 Transitional Texts and Emerging Linguistic Self-Awareness - 250 V. Linguists and Logicians - 262 The Changing Relations between Grammar, Rhetoric and Music in the Early Modern Period - 264 The Artes Sermocinales in Times of Adversity - 284 VI. Philology and Philosophy - 298 Manuscript Hunting and the Challenge of Textual Variance in Late Seventeenth-Century Icelandic Studies - 300 Spinoza in the History of Biblical Scholarship - 314 The ‘Rules of Critique’ - 328 VII. The History of History - 350 Framing a New Mode of Historical Experience - 352 Philosophy’s Shadow - 368 Contributors - 386 List of Figures - 392 Index - 396