Customer Reviews

Humanist Educational Treatises (I Tatti Renaissance Library)

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I'm not a renaissance scholar, but I really enjoy reading this series. A lot of thought has gone into the selection of works to be published under this imprint, and the result are a set of elegant books that offer a fascinating window into early modern thought.

This book is a perfect example of that. Four essays about education have been translated into English, and it is amazing to discover that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Some of the themes seem amazingly contemporary: the authors deal with corporal punishment (we hear both pro and con views), the importance of physical education, the errors of too much gender conditioning, and (this one made me laugh out loud because I think of it as such a modern issue) the negative effects of over-booking a child's time with extracurriculars!

Anyone who is interested in the history of the theory of education will enjoy this book, or even in developing their own theory of education (for home schooling, say) will enjoy reading this book. Knowledge of Latin is not required!

The I Tatti Renaissance Library series follows a hard tradition when it follows the Loeb Classical library, but in the case of this collection of renaissance educational treatises, it succeeds. Kallendorf offers a readable but faithful translation to four seminal but surprisingly unavailable works (Vergerio's _The Character and Studies Befitting a Free-Born Youth_, Bruni's _The Study of Literature_, Pius II's _The Education of Boys_, and Guarino's _A Program of Teaching and Learning_). The Latin text is based on previously published editions but has been carefully reconsidered. Nevertheless it does not intend to be a critical edition for the texts. Finally, with signature seams and cloth binding, this is a permanent book, but the paper and print are somewhat less fine than the older Loeb volumes.

At first it might seem strange to have a Pope advocating a liberal education, including the arts, and sciences, but this is the source of that great tradition. His arguments are moral, but still sound, even today.