The Renaissance: Its Nature and Origins
by .University of Wisconsin Press, $3.75.
Brevity and erudition, a rare conjunction, are happily mated in this essay on the Renaissance, which combines the inelusiveness of a “Cook’s Tour” with the questing spirit of the historian. The tour takes in politics and economics; literature and art; history, philosophy, and philology; discoveries and inventions. The quest seeks to establish what produced the blaze of creativity and the general flowering of life known as the Renaissance. Dr. Sellery’s conclusion is that the Revival of Learning was not the force which ushered in the Renaissance: “The real seminal force was the natural effort of men to achieve a more abundant life . . . by applying their wits to problems which admitted of solution.” Why this strenuous and successful application of wits to problems took place precisely when it did is not quite satisfactorily accounted for.