The Race of Time

The Race of Time - three lectures on Renaissance historiography - The Alexander Lectures for 1965 at the University of Toronto dealt with the relations of the English Renaissance historians to other writers of their time and to the historians of later ages. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, even more than in our own time, the materials and techniques proper to historical writings were but vaguely defined. When the facts at his disposal were suspect or were merely crystallizations of fancy and legend, the Renaissance historian found that he was unable to deal with the without encroaching on the territory of the poet. When - inevitably - he attempted to draw conclusions from his view of the past and of human nature, he usurped the function of the philosopher. And even when he stayed within the bounds of indisputable fact he risked offending monarchs to whom certain facts, if widely known, would be dangerous. All these difficulties, and the ways in which Renaissance historians faced or avoided them, are recounted and analyzed in professor Baker's lectures. Supported and enlivened with a wealth of quotation from the historians themselves, their critics, and their colleagues, The Race of time illuminates the problems of historiography in an age when academic freedom was always subservient to the national interest, to the sensitivity of rules, to the prevalence of legend, and to the envy of contemporaries.