The Sophistic Renaissance

The Sophistic Renaissance traces the fragmentary fortune of the ancient Greek sophists in the European Renaissance. After examining the textual tradition of the sophists from antiquity to the Renaissance and documenting their notoriety in humanist commentaries, the study surveys a broad range of literary texts that share the sophistic impulse to revel in opposing arguments and to exploit the capacity of speech to neutralize itself and to undermine all dogmatic convictions. The two authors who emerge as the champions of this relativistic Renaissance are Desiderius Erasmus and Michel de Montaigne. Ultimately, The Sophistic Renaissance seeks to put Erasmus and Montaigne in dialogue both with each other and with some of the most challenging and provocative voices of the classical past.