DOCSLIB.ORG

01. Rosenwein

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
01. Rosenwein Barbara H. Rosenwein, Loyola University, Chicago The Place of Renaissance Italy in the History of Emotions* The Italian Renaissance continues to hold an important place in historians’ periodization of Western history. Yet Renaissance Italy plays an oddly small role in most histories of emotion. This holds true in two ways: first, in discussions of the history of theories of emotion; and, second, in discussions that touch on the history of felt - or, at rate, expressed - emotions. This situation is, however, beginning to change. In this paper I will briefly talk about theory, spend most of my time on practice, and at the end will suggest how and why it would be good to put the two together when studying emotions in the Italian Renaissance. Theories of Emotion Histories of theories of the emotions generally spend little time on the Italian Renaissance. Two recent examples must here stand for all: the new Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Emotion jumps from medieval notions of the passions to Kant, while Dominik Perler’s treatment of theories of the emotions from 1270 to 1670 leaps over the Italian Renaissance as it spans the period from the fourteenth-century English William of Ockham to the sixteenth-century French Michel de Montaigne.1 Yet Renaissance humanists were often keenly interested in the emotions. Petrarch (d. 1374), for example, treated numerous emotions in his De secreto conflictu curarum mearum and above all in his De remediis utriusque fortune, where he borrowed from but also refocused ancient Stoic theories of the emotions.2 Francesco Filelfo (d. 1481) wrote a systematic treatise on the emotions, De morali disciplina, drawing on Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations and the Peri pathon of Pseudo-Andronicus of Rhodes.3 And between Petrarch and Filelfo was Coluccio Salutati (d. 1406) and others as well.4 When modern scholars of the Italian Renaissance have dealt with its theories of emotions, they have looked above all at grief and consolatory literature.5 George McClure * I wish to thank Damien Boquet, Riccardo Cristiani, John McManamon, Maureen C. Miller, Edward Muir, Jan Söffner, and the participants of the conference for which this paper was written, particularly Professors Stephano U. Baldassarri, Serena Ferente, Marco Gentile, Carol Lansing, and Isabella Lazzarini, for their generous help and suggestions. 1 The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Emotion, ed. by P. Goldie, Oxford 2010; D. Perler, Transformationen der Gefühle. Philosophische Emotionstheorien, 1270-1670, Frankfurt am Main 2011. 2 See G. W. McClure, Sorrow and Consolation in Italian Humanism, Princeton 1990, cap. 3. 3 J. Kraye, Francesco Filelfo on Emotions, Virtues and Vices: A Re-examination of his Sources, in Eadem, Classical Traditions in Renaissance Philosophy, Aldershot 2002, article V. For the theory of emotions in the Tusculan Disputations, see Cicero on the Emotions: Tusculan Disputations 3 and 4, trans. and commentary M. Graver, Chicago 2002. For other uses of Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations during the Renaissance, see C. Quillen, “The Uses of the Past in Quattrocento Florence: A Reading of Leonardo Bruni’s Dialogues”, Journal of the History of Ideas, 71, 3 (2010), pp. 363-385. 4 See below, n. 53 for Giannozzo Manetti. 5 The chief literature on the topic up to the mid 80s is cited in G. W. McClure, “A Little Known Renaissance Manual of Consolation: Nicolaus Modrussiense’s De consolatione, 1465-1466”, in Supplementum Festivum: Studies in Honor of Paul Oskar Kristeller, ed. by J. Hankins, J. Monfasani, and F. Purnell, Jr., Binghamton, N. Y. 1987, p. 247 n. 1. See also M. L. King, “An Inconsolable Father and His Humanist Consolers, Jacopo Antonio Marcello, Venetian Nobleman, Patron, and Man of Letters”, in Ibidem, pp. 221-246. Among the publications that have appeared since 1987 are McClure, Sorrow and Consolation; J. M. McManamon, Funeral Oratory and the Cultural Ideals of Italian Humanism, Chapel Hill 1989; M. L. King, The Death of the Child Valerio 1 was no doubt correct when he suggested that the modern focus on sorrow accurately reflected Renaissance preoccupations. Speaking of Jacopo Antonio Marcello, a Venetian nobleman moved by the death of his son to ask various humanists to write works of consolation for him, McClure pointed out that Marcello’s grief was also a source of both pride and fame, and thus perfectly suited to Renaissance values.6 This is important. One cannot easily separate the values - and with them the theories - of any period from the lived experience in the same period. That is why, as I shall remark at the end of this paper, it would be very useful to combine theory with practice in order to explore systematically the emotional expression that we find in non-theoretical materials. Lived Emotions: Historiographical Traditions That consideration brings me to the non-theoretical domain. What have Italian Renaissance scholars said about the emotional lives of their subjects apart from theory? The answer until very recently is: surprisingly little. Nevertheless, there is a limited historiographical tradition. I will here outline four approaches or schools of thought. I call the first the ‘Burckhardtian’; the second the ‘Eliasian’ (after Norbert Elias); the third the ‘performative’ because it sees emotions as acting out, modifying, or even creating social institutions; and the fourth the “linguistic” because it profits from the linguistic turn in historical studies.7 1. The Burckhardtian View Jacob Burckhardt’s Die Kultur der Renaissance in Italien, first published in 1860, described Italian Renaissance emotional sensibilities as essentially the precursors of Burckhardt’s own Romantic age. For Burckhardt, medieval men were so tied to their group identities and lacking in a sense of their own individuality that they had only the rarest insight into their internal lives. What was the nature of the insight that Burckhardt had in mind? He gives us a hint when he speaks of Petrarch’s “descriptions of moments of joy and sorrow which must have been thoroughly his own, since no one before him gives us anything of the kind».8 Burckhardt looked at Boccaccio, who, he said, “succeeds sometimes in giving a most powerful and effective picture of his feeling. The return to a spot consecrated by love (Sonnet 22), the melancholy of spring (Sonnet 33), the sadness of the poet who feels himself growing old (Sonnet 65), are admirably treated by him».9 Turning to Leon Battista Alberti, Burckhardt found him exploring “the deepest spring of his nature [...], the sympathetic intensity with which he entered into the whole life around him. At the sight of noble trees and waving cornfields he shed tears».10 And so on. Marcello, Chicago 1994; U. Schaeben, Trauer im humanistischen Dialog. Das Trostgespräch des Giannozzo Manetti und seine Quellen, Munich 2002. Related to these studies of dolor are those on humanists’ thoughts about miseria and felicitas: see C. Trinkaus, Adversity’s Noblemen: The Italian Humanists on Happiness, New York 19652; Idem, In Our Image and Likeness: Humanity and Divinity in Italian Humanist Thought, 2 vols., London 1970. 6 McClure, Sorrow and Consolation, p. 115; on Marcello, see King, An Inconsolable Father, and Eadem, The Death of the Child. 7 There are other approaches. One is literary/Freudian: see, e.g. J. Tambling, Dante in Purgatory: States of Affect, Turnhout 2010. For a useful recent overview of the approaches historians have used to explore the history of emotions, see S. Ferente, “Storici ed emozioni”, Storica, 43-45 (2009), pp. 371-392. 8 J. Burckhardt, Die Kultur der Renaissance in Italien. Ein Versuch, Basel 1860, pp. 311-312; quoted here from Idem, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, trans. S. G. C. Middlemore, New York 1935, p. 311. 9 Burckhardt, Die Kultur, p. 312; Idem, The Civilization, p. 311. 10 Idem, Die Kultur, p. 141; Idem, The Civilization, p. 150. 2 The historiographical tradition initiated by Burckhardt sees the emotions of Renaissance men as expressive of their deepest feelings. That tradition continues to the present day, above all in studies of Petrarch. For George McClure, for example, the young Petrarch fed “on tears, sighs, and swoons, indulging the pleasant pain of romantic longing».11 This was, for McClure, “a new outlook not only on the general psychology of human emotion, but also on the specific challenges posed by the human condition: particularly those of misery, illness, and death».12 McClure contrasted Renaissance sentiments with the “somewhat compartmentalized psychological worlds of the poet, philosopher, priest, and penitent» of the medieval period.13 And when Petrarch’s tone shifted - when, later in life, he came to regret finding sweetness in lamentation and upbraided a grieving father for “immoderate weeping» - McClure saw this as reflecting a Stoic resolve that warred with Petrarch’s “enduring need to weep and to write».14 2. The Eliasian Approach Nevertheless, despite the exceptions noted above, the tradition inaugurated by Burckhardt was long ago more or less snuffed out by the historiographical approach that is here dubbed the Eliasian.15 Norbert Elias’s narrative of the history of lived emotion was set forth in his exceptionally influential book The Civilizing Process.16 This is not the place to explore the theory in detail; suffice it to say that Elias postulated a process by which violent behavior, emotions, and impulses of every sort (which, in Elias’s view were essentially equivalent phenomena) were brought under control.17 The essential trajectory of emotions’ history went from impulse to restraint. Elias’s focus was on France, not Italy. Indeed, he went out of his way to deny the pertinence of Italy to his story. After quoting Gabriel Hanotaux, who thought that French princes learned from the “tyrants of Naples, Florence, and Ferrara», Elias discounted this, arguing that it would require “a precise examination in terms of structural history» - something he was clearly unwilling to undertake - to “determine how far the centralization processes and the organization of government in the Italian city states resemble those of early absolutist France».18 He very much doubted that small city- states could engender a civilizing process.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • An Annotated List of Italian Renaissance Humanists, Their Writings About Jews, and Involvement in Hebrew Studies, Ca
    An annotated list of Italian Renaissance humanists, their writings about Jews, and involvement in Hebrew studies, ca. 1440-ca.1540 This list, arranged in chronological order by author’s date of birth, where known, is a preliminary guide to Italian humanists’ Latin and vernacular prose and poetic accounts of Jews and Judaic culture and history from about 1440 to 1540. In each case, I have sought to provide the author’s name and birth and death dates, a brief biography highlighting details which especially pertain to his interest in Jews, a summary of discussions about Jews, a list of relevant works and dates of composition, locations of manuscripts, and a list of secondary sources or studies of the author and his context arranged alphabetically by author’s name. Manuscripts are listed in alphabetical order by city of current location; imprints, as far as possible, by ascending date. Abbreviations: DBI Dizionario biografico degli Italiani (Rome: Istituto della enciclopedia italiana, 1960-present) Kristeller, Iter Paul Oskar Kristeller, Iter Italicum: A Finding List of Uncatalogued or Incompletely Catalogued Humanistic Manuscripts of the Renaissance in Italian and Other Libraries; Accedunt alia itinera, 6 vols (London: Warburg Institute; Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1963-1991) Simon Atumano (d. c. 1380) Born in Constantinople and became a Basilian monk in St John of Studion there. Bishop of Gerace in Calabria from 1348 until 1366, and Latin archbishop of Thebes until 1380. During his time in Thebes, which was the capital of the Catalan duchy of Athens, he studied Hebrew and in the mid- to late-1370s he began work on a polyglot Latin-Greek-Hebrew Bible dedicated to Pope Urban VI.
    [Show full text]
  • Introduction
    © Copyright, Princeton University Press. No part of this book may be distributed, posted, or reproduced in any form by digital or mechanical means without prior written permission of the publisher. Introduction This is first an essay about emotions and attitudes that include some estimate of the self, such as pride, self-esteem, vanity, arro- gance, shame, humility, embarrassment, resentment, and indigna- tion. It is also about some qualities that bear on these emotions: our integrity, sincerity, or authenticity. I am concerned with the way these emotions and qualities manifest themselves in human life in general, and in the modern world in particular. The essay is therefore what the great German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), never afraid of a grand title, would have called an exercise in pragmatic anthropology: Physiological knowledge of the human being concerns the investiga- tion of what nature makes of the human being; pragmatic, the inves- tigation of what he as a free-acting being makes of himself, or can and should make of himself.1 Kant here echoes an older theological tradition that while other animals have their settled natures, human beings are free to make For general queries, contact [email protected] Blackburn.indb 1 1/2/2014 1:21:37 PM © Copyright, Princeton University Press. No part of this book may be distributed, posted, or reproduced in any form by digital or mechanical means without prior written permission of the publisher. 2 INTRODUCTION of themselves what they will. So this book is about what we make of ourselves, or can and should make of ourselves.
    [Show full text]
  • Politics and Panegyrics in Fifteenth-Century Florentine Diplomacy Brian Jeffrey Maxson, East Tennessee State University
    East Tennessee State University From the SelectedWorks of Brian J. Maxson 2011 The aM ny Shades of Praise: Politics and Panegyrics in Fifteenth-Century Florentine Diplomacy Brian Jeffrey Maxson, East Tennessee State University Available at: https://works.bepress.com/brian-maxson/65/ The Many Shades of Praise. Politics and Panegyrics in Fifteenth-Century Florentine Diplomacy Brian Jeffrey Maxson In 1465, the Republic of Florence sent diplomats to congratulate the King of Naples on a military victory of his family over the House of Anjou. Diplomatic protocol required that the Florentines send a congratulatory mission or risk offending the powerful king. The rituals that marked the entrance of their diplomats into the King’s presence required a panegyric of the King and his accomplishments. The problem was that the King’s success opposed Floren- tine interests. The Florentines had refrained from assisting the King during his war, although a treaty had required that they do so.1 Disagreements about Florentine exiles had so soured relations between Naples and Florence that the King went hunting rather than formally greet the Florentine diplomats who arrived in Naples earlier in 1465.2 Praising the King also risked offending the Florentine allies that the King had recently defeated.3 Thus, the oratorical 1 Archives: ASF: Archivio di Stato di Firenze; BML: Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana; BNCF: Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze; B.U. Padova: Biblioteca Universitaria Padova; Collections Used: Car.Cor: Carte di Corredo; Carte Strozziane; Leg: Legazione e Commissarie; Magl: Magliabechiana; Misc.Rep: Miscellanea Repubblicana; Pac: Paciatichi- ano; Plut: Plutei; Redi; Sig: Signoria. This essay is part of a larger project on fifteenth-cen- tury diplomatic oratory in Florence.
    [Show full text]
  • Descartes' Bête Machine, the Leibnizian Correction and Religious Influence
    University of South Florida Digital Commons @ University of South Florida Graduate Theses and Dissertations Graduate School 4-7-2010 Descartes' Bête Machine, the Leibnizian Correction and Religious Influence John Voelpel University of South Florida Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/etd Part of the American Studies Commons, and the Philosophy Commons Scholar Commons Citation Voelpel, John, "Descartes' Bête Machine, the Leibnizian Correction and Religious Influence" (2010). Graduate Theses and Dissertations. https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/etd/3527 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at Digital Commons @ University of South Florida. It has been accepted for inclusion in Graduate Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ University of South Florida. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Descartes’ Bête Machine, the Leibnizian Correction and Religious Influence by John Voelpel A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Department of Philosophy College of Arts and Sciences University of South Florida Major Professor: Martin Schönfeld, Ph.D. Roger Ariew, Ph.D. Stephen Turner, Ph.D. Date of Approval: April 7, 2010 Keywords: environmental ethics, nonhuman animals, Montaigne, skepticism, active force, categories © Copyright 2010, John W. Voelpel 040410 Note to Reader: Because the quotations from referenced sources in this paper include both parentheses and brackets, this paper uses braces “{}” in any location {inside or outside of quotations} for the writer’s parenthetical-like additions in both text and footnotes. 040410 Table of Contents Abstract iii I. Introduction 1 II. Chapter One: Montaigne: An Explanation for Descartes’ Bête Machine 4 Historical Environment 5 Background Concerning Nonhuman Nature 8 Position About Nature Generally 11 Position About Nonhuman Animals 12 Influence of Religious Institutions 17 Summary of Montaigne’s Perspective 20 III.
    [Show full text]
  • Leonardo Bruni, the Medici, and the Florentine Histories1
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by University of Queensland eSpace /HRQDUGR%UXQLWKH0HGLFLDQGWKH)ORUHQWLQH+LVWRULHV *DU\,DQ]LWL Journal of the History of Ideas, Volume 69, Number 1, January 2008, pp. 1-22 (Article) 3XEOLVKHGE\8QLYHUVLW\RI3HQQV\OYDQLD3UHVV DOI: 10.1353/jhi.2008.0009 For additional information about this article http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/jhi/summary/v069/69.1ianziti.html Access provided by University of Queensland (30 Oct 2015 04:56 GMT) Leonardo Bruni, the Medici, and the Florentine Histories1 Gary Ianziti Leonardo Bruni’s relationship to the Medici regime raises some intriguing questions. Born in 1370, Bruni was Chancellor of Florence in 1434, when Cosimo de’ Medici and his adherents returned from exile, banished their opponents, and seized control of government.2 Bruni never made known his personal feelings about this sudden regime change. His memoirs and private correspondence are curiously silent on the issue.3 Yet it must have been a painful time for him. Among those banished by the Medici were many of his long-time friends and supporters: men like Palla di Nofri Strozzi, or Rinaldo degli Albizzi. Others, like the prominent humanist and anti-Medicean agita- tor Francesco Filelfo, would soon join the first wave of exiles.4 1 This study was completed in late 2006/early 2007, prior to the appearance of volume three of the Hankins edition and translation of Bruni’s History of the Florentine People (see footnote 19). References to books nine to twelve of the History are consequently based on the Santini edition, cited in footnote 52.
    [Show full text]
  • Collected Letters: “Epistolarum Libri” XLVIII. Francesco Filelfo. Ed
    REVIEWS 1469 conian word limits, endnotes, and forcing authors to truncate documentation. This is a model study to be praised and imitated. Paul F. Grendler, University of Toronto, emeritus Collected Letters: “Epistolarum Libri” XLVIII. Francesco Filelfo. Ed. Jeroen de Keyser. 4 vols. Hellenica 54. Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso, 2015. 2,212 pp. !300. Students of the intellectual culture of early modern Europe have a happy problem. De- spite the labors of generations of editors, the libraries of Europe still hold very large quan- tities of unpublished Latin letters from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries, many of which were written by clever and committed scholars working at the forefront of their disciplines. This abundance of rich and largely unstudied sources provides modern schol- ars of the period with a challenge: how do we identify meaningful and manageable edito- rial projects among the material that remains? The most common strategy is to publish the correspondence that has gathered around a single author. In the first decades of the twentieth century, the monumental edition of the letters of Erasmus begun by P. S. Allen established a model for such publications that has been influential ever since. However, projects on such an ambitious scale bring their own difficulties: it was published over many years, and passed through the hands of several editors on its way to publication. Some collections are so large that they will inevitably be divided among a number of editors. The correspondence of Justus Lipsius, for example, at well over 4,000 letters is just such a task. Yet distributing the labor over many years, and many editors, has led to uneven progress and made it more difficult to achieve editorial consistency across the corpus.
    [Show full text]
  • L-G-0010822438-0026417920.Pdf
    Super alta perennis Studien zur Wirkung der Klassischen Antike Band 17 Herausgegeben von Uwe Baumann, MarcLaureys und Winfried Schmitz DavidA.Lines /MarcLaureys /Jill Kraye (eds.) FormsofConflictand Rivalries in Renaissance Europe V&Runipress Bonn UniversityPress ® MIX Papier aus verantwor- tungsvollen Quellen ® www.fsc.org FSC C083411 Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie;detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http://dnb.d-nb.de abrufbar. ISBN 978-3-8471-0409-4 ISBN 978-3-8470-0409-7 (E-Book) Veröffentlichungen der Bonn University Press erscheinen im Verlag V&Runipress GmbH. Gedruckt mit freundlicher Unterstützung des „Leverhulme Trust International Network“ (Großbritannien) zum Thema „RenaissanceConflictand Rivalries:Cultural Polemics in Europe, c. 1300–c.1650“ und der Philosophischen Fakultätder UniversitätBonn. 2015, V&Runipress in Göttingen /www.v-r.de Alle Rechte vorbehalten. Das Werk und seine Teile sind urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung in anderen als den gesetzlich zugelassenen Fällen bedarf der vorherigen schriftlichen Einwilligung des Verlages. Printed in Germany. Titelbild:Luca della Robbia, relieffor the Florentine campanile, c. 1437 (Foto:Warburg Institute, Photographic Collection, out of copyright) Druck und Bindung:CPI buchbuecher.de GmbH, Birkach Gedruckt aufalterungsbeständigem Papier. Contents DavidA.Lines /MarcLaureys /JillKraye Foreword ..................................
    [Show full text]
  • Francesco Filelfo As a Writer of Invective
    Francesco Filelfo as a Writer of Invective David Marsh As in other literary genres, the writers of Renaissance invective often drew inspiration from Francesco Petrarca (1304–1374), whose four polemical writ- ings revived a classical tradition that dated back to Cicero, pseudo-Sallust, and Jerome.1 In the Quattrocento, many humanists gained notoriety by pub- lishing invectives against rival scholars, most notably Antonio Loschi, Poggio Bracciolini, Lorenzo Valla, Bartolomeo Facio, and Antonio da Rho. Oddly, it seems that the singularly contentious and combative Francesco Filelfo (1398–1481) wrote nothing that he explicitly called an invective.2 Indeed, on several occasions the humanist dismissed invective as distasteful. The tirades of Antonio da Rho (c. 1398–c.1450), for example, were notorious for their viru- lence; and in 1443 Filelfo accordingly deprecated the friar’s “insane” attacks on the humanist Pier Candido Decembrio, whom he often considered an enemy.3 1 On Cicero and Roman invective, see Arena 2007, and Booth 2007. For an introduction to all four Petrarchan invectives with Latin text and English translation and notes, see Petrarch 2003. Enenkel 2010 distinguishes Contra medicum from the Ciceronian model of In Pisonem: Petrarch rejects the urban social values of Roman invective (he despises Avignon and lauds solitude), and employs Scholastic forms of argumentation. For the humanist invectives of the Renaissance, see Laureys 2003, Helmrath 2010, and Marsh 2016. On the wider context of polemics, known in German as Streitkultur (agonal culture), see Laureys-Simons 2010, and Lines-Laureys-Kraye 2015. 2 I here echo De Keyser 2015, 15: “Oddly enough, Filelfo wrote nothing which he explicitly called an invective; but the majority of his writings, in numerous literary genres, contain ad hominem attacks, including, most prominently, on Poggio.” 3 PhE·05.21 (30 December 1443): “Vellem equidem, pater optime, ab omni istiusmodi scribendi genere te continuisses, neque cum insanienti Petro Candido Decembre desipere ipse volu- isses.
    [Show full text]
  • Greek Studies in Italy: from Petrarch to Bruni
    Greek Studies in Italy: From Petrarch to Bruni The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Hankins, James. 2007. Greek studies in Italy: From Petrarch to Bruni. In Petrarca e il Mondo Greco Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studi, Reggio Calabria, 26-30 Novembre 2001, ed. Michele Feo, Vincenzo Fera, Paola Megna, and Antonio Rollo, 2 vols., Quaderni Petrarcheschi, vols. XII-XIII, 329-339. Firenze: Le Lettere. Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:8301600 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA GREEK STUDIES IN ITALY: FROM PETRARCH TO BRUNI Comparing with the mind's eye the revival of Greek studies that took place in Avignon and Florence in the middle decades of the fourteenth century with the second revival that began in Florence three decades later, two large problems of historical interpretation stand out, which have not yet, I hope, entirely exhausted their interest—even after the valuable studies of Giuseppe Cammelli, R. J. Leonertz, Roberto Weiss, Agostino Pertusi, N. G. Wilson, Ernesto Berti, and many others. The first problem concerns the reason why (to use Pertusi's formulation) Salutati succeeded where Boccaccio failed: why no Latin scholar of the mid-fourteenth century succeeded in learning classical Greek, whereas the students of Manuel Chrysoloras were able not only to learn Greek themselves, but to pass down their knowledge to later generations.
    [Show full text]
  • Giordano Bruno and Michel De Montaigne
    Journal of Early Modern Studies, n. 6 (2017), pp. 157-181 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.13128/JEMS-2279-7149-20393 (Re)thinking Time: Giordano Bruno and Michel de Montaigne Rachel Ashcroft Durham University (<[email protected]>) Abstract The article seeks to illustrate how the theme of time may be a worthwhile starting point towards uncovering useful connections between the philosophy of Giordano Bruno and that of Michel de Montaigne. Firstly, a brief literature review will assess the admittedly small but promising criticism that has previously attempted to bring the two writers together. Subsequently, the article argues that time is a meaningful way to approach their texts. Specifically, time refers to the drama that arises between the material body, which generally exists within a so-called natural order of time, and the mind which is not tied to the present moment, and is free to contemplate both past and future time. The article argues that Bruno and Montaigne’s understanding of time in this manner leads them to question traditional representations of time, such as the common fear of death, in remarkably similar ways. This process will be illustrated through examples drawn from two chapters of the Essais and a dialogue from the Eroici furori, and will conclude by assessing the straightforward connections that have arisen between the two authors, as well as scope for further research in this area. Keywords: Giordano Bruno, Michel de Montaigne, Sixteenth Century, Time 1. Introduction In recent years, a small number of critics have attempted to establish significant biographical and intellectual connections between Giordano Bruno and Michel de Montaigne.
    [Show full text]
  • Manetti's Socrates and the Socrateses of Antiquity
    Manetti's Socrates and the Socrateses of Antiquity The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Hankins, James. 2008. Manetti’s Socrates and the Socrateses of antiquity. In Dignitas et excellentia hominis: Atti del convegno internazionale di studi su Giannozzo Manetti, Ed. Stefano U. Baldassarri, 203-219. Florence: Le Lettere. Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:2961810 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA Manetti’s Socrates and the Socrateses of Antiquity Towards the middle of his Life of Socrates (c.1440), the first biography of the great philosopher written since antiquity, Giannozzo Manetti roundly states that the opinions attributed to Socrates in the books of Plato were genuine, and that furthermore they were shared by Plato too: Nullum igitur doctrinae [Socratis] apud nos monumentum extat, nisi si quis forte Platonis libros Socratis, magistri sui, monumenta appellare vellet. In quibus fere omnibus, cum Socrates loquens exprimatur, eas Socratis sententias fuisse vere simul atque eleganter dici potest quae in Platonis dialogis illius verbis efferuntur; et versa vice eas Platonis opiniones extitisse dicemus, quae ex ore Socratis pronuntiantur.1 The remark is one that a modern classical scholar could not but regard as staggeringly naïve, given the shelves full of books that have been written over the last two centuries attempting to recover the historical Socrates and, in particular, to distinguish his teaching from that of Plato.
    [Show full text]
  • LIST of CONTRIBUTORS Stefano U
    LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS Stefano U. Baldassarri is Director of The International Studies Insti- tute (ISI Florence) and holds a Ph.D. from Yale University. He is author of the monograph, La vipera e il giglio. Lo scontro tra Milano e Firenze nelle invettive di Antonio Loschi e Coluccio Salutati (Rome: Aracne, 2012), as well as several critical editions of Renaissance texts (mostly in Latin), by such humanists as Leonardo Bruni, Antonio Loschi, Giannozzo Manetti, and Coluccio Salutati. He has received research grants from various Euro- pean and US foundations, including a year-long Villa I Tatti fellowship in 2000. His main scholarly interests include classical studies, medieval and Renaissance literature, philology, translation theory and practice. On these subjects and related topics, Baldassarri has published essays in many scholarly journals and edited numerous conference proceedings. He is co-editor of Rivista di Letteratura Storiografica Italiana. David Cast was educated at Oxford University and Columbia Univer- sity where he received his Ph.D. in 1970. His work has focused on artistic theory in the Renaissance, architectural language in England in the 17th and 18th centuries and realist painting in England in the 20th century. Julia Haig Gaisser is Eugenia Chase Guild Professor Emeritus in the Humanities, Bryn Mawr College. She is principally interested in Latin poetry, Renaissance humanism, and the reception and transmission of classical texts. She is the author of the article on Catullus in Catalogus Translationum et Commentariorum 7 (1992). Her books include Catullus and His Renaissance Readers (1993), The Fortunes of Apuleius and the Golden Ass (2008), and Catullus (2009); she is also the editor and translator of Pie- rio Valeriano on the Ill Fortune of Learned Men (1999), Giovanni Pontano’s Dialogues: Charon and Antonius (2012), and Giovanni Pontano’s Dialogues: Actius, Aegidius, and Asinus (forthcoming).
    [Show full text]