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.