If the universe were conceived to fulfill a certain divine plan or to manifest God’s will and glory, what would the place of an individual be within this plan? What is more, if, from the very beginning of its existence and through divine providence, it were predestined to be driven toward a certain end, how could people adjust their individual lives to the incognizable universal design and react to the obscure future fraught with both luck and failure? These questions, which have occupied humanity for centuries, formed a remarkable element of early modern European thought. This collection of essays presents new insights into what shaped and constituted reflections on fate and fortune between, roughly, 1400 and 1650, both in word and image. This volume argues that these ideas were emblematic of a more fundamental argument about the self, society, and the universe and shows that their influence was more widespread, geographically and thematically, than hitherto assumed.
Author(s): Ovanes Akopyan (ed.)
Series: Brill's Studies in Intellectual History, 327
Publisher: Brill
Year: 2021
Language: English
Pages: 300
City: Leiden
List of Figures vii
Notes on Contributors x
Introduction: Not Simple Twists of Fate / Ovanes Akopyan 1
Part 1. The Concept of Fate in Philosophy and Theology
1. Renaissance Consolations: Philosophical Remedies for Fate and Fortune / John Sellars 13
2. Coluccio Salutati and the Humanist Critique of Fate / Paul Richard Blum 37
3. Fate, Providence, and Fortuna in Giordano Bruno’s 'Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast' / Elisabeth Blum 47
4. Fortune and Fate in the Philosophy of Pierre Gassendi (1592–1655): Balancing between Freedom and Necessity / Jo Coture 62
Part 2. Political and Social Context
5. Fate and Fortune in Machiavelli’s Anatomy of the Body Politic / Guido Giglioni 95
6. 'Fortune Is a Mistresse': Figures of Fortune in English Renaissance Poetry / Orlando Reade 118
7. The Game of Art and Chance: Lottery, Fortune, and 'Fatum' in the Low Countries in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries / Sophie Raux 148
Part 3. Artistic Considerations
8. Renaissance Iconology of Fate / Damiano Acciarino 183
9. Fortune, Fate and Providential Design in Georges de La Tour / Dalia Judovitz 215
10. Ptolemy, Fortune, and Politics: A Case of the Reception of Western Scholarship in Early Modern Russia / Ovanes Akopyan 233
Bibliography 259
Index Nominum 285
