Events

The Conversational Garden

David Randall (Director of Research, National Association of Scholars)

The image of the garden was useful for Renaissance writers--the garden of Paradise, the lover's garden, the philosopher's garden, and more. The philosopher's garden included an interesting variant--the garden of conversation, the site of discourse that sought out truth. Renaissance writers rehearsed a number of ideas by way of the garden image that would bear fruit in later centuries, in the gardens of (among others) Moderata Fonte, John Milton, Thomas More, and William Shakespeare. This talk will survey the range of this garden imagery, and explore some of its more important implications for later intellectual history.