The first in a series that will provide a comprehensive comparative history of the humanities, this book focuses on the early modern period in the development of this dynamic field. Specialists in philology, musicology, art history, linguistics, and literary theory examine the intertwining nature of these various disciplines, as well as their impact on the sciences. The contributors, including the renowned scholars Floris Cohen, David Cram, and Ingrid Rowland, reveal how the humanities developed from the "liberal arts" to modern disciplines via the curriculum of humanistic schools. They go on...

While it is clear that around 1800 the humanities as a discipline rose to prominence, it is less clear what the exact nature of this shift in academia was. Was it a sudden revolution caused by a momentary but powerful change in the zeitgeist or the turning point of a much longer process? In this volume, the editors have selected a series of essays that look at the origins of the humanities and find that long before 1800 the concept of the humanities was already at the fore. The shift around 1800 was thus mostly institutional, not theoretical. The Making of the Humanities traces this...

This book is the long awaited third volume in a series that provides a comprehensive comparative history of the humanities. This installment turns to the modern period, from 1850 to 2000, bringing together specialists in philology, musicology, art history, linguistics, archaeology, and literary theory to explore the intertwining nature of these various disciplines, and how together they make up the broader investigative project of the humanities.

Many histories of science have been written, but A New History of the Humanities offers the first overarching history of the humanities from Antiquity to the present. There are already historical studies of musicology, logic, art history, linguistics, and historiography, but this volume gathers these, and many other humanities disciplines, into a single coherent account.
Its central theme is the way in which scholars throughout the ages and in virtually all civilizations have sought to identify patterns in texts, art, music, languages, literature, and the past. What rules can we apply if...