Charles Garfield Nauert - The A to Z of the Renaissance

This bibliography is intended to serve readers of English-language publications, though a very few important works that have never been translated from other languages are included. The selection of titles reflects the dictionarys emphasis on the Renaissance as a cultural force, but it also includes some works that can guide readers to material on political, social, and economic history. In particular, the section on textbooks includes useful general accounts that also contain bibliographies directing the reader to more specialized publications. One saving grace of the emphasis on English-language publications is that English-speaking scholars have made major contributions to the study of the Renaissance, especially the study of Italy, the birthplace of the new culture. This has many causes, but one of them is that because of the policies of the Nazi regime in Germany between 1933 and 1945, a number of talented scholars who normally would have had their careers at German universities spent their most productive years in the United States, Canada, and Great Britain. These scholars (Hans Baron, Felix Gilbert, Paul Oskar Kristeller, and Erwin Panofsky are perhaps the most eminent examples) thus trained English-speaking students to investigate the history of Europe, especially Italy, in this fertile period of European history.

Readers interested in pursuing Renaissance topics further will find that four North American periodical publications and one in the United Kingdom focus on the study of these centuries: Renaissance Quarterly (a publication of the Renaissance Society of America), the Sixteenth Century Journal (a publication of the Sixteenth Century Studies Society and Conference), Archiv fr Reformationsgeschichte / Archive for Reformation History (a bilingual joint publication of the German Verein fur Reformationsgeschichte and the Society for Reformation Research), and Renaissance and Reformation (a publication of the Canadian Society for Renaissance Studies and the Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies at Victoria University, University of Toronto). In the United Kingdom, the journal Renaissance Studies is a publication of the Society for Renaissance Studies.