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FREE DESIDERIUS ERASMUS OF ROTTERDAM: ON COPIA OF WORDS AND IDEAS PDF Donald King,David Rix,Desiderius Erasmus | none | 15 Jul 1999 | Marquette University Press | 9780874622126 | English | WI, United States Erasmus - Wikipedia It was a best-seller widely used for teaching how to rewrite pre-existing texts, and how to incorporate them in a new composition. The first official edition of De Copiatitled De duplici copia rerum ac verborum commentarii duowas published by Josse Bade in Paris in and helped establish Erasmus as a major humanist scholar. Erasmus did not feel that his work was fully complete with the edition of De Copiaand he continued to update the work throughout his life. The general concept and structure of the work remained the same over time, even as Erasmus amended and expanded the text. The initial chapters concern themselves with general commentary on copia, its advantages, and its importance. Chapters 1—12 A discussion of the general nature and value of the abundant style. Chapters 13 — 33 An analysis of major tropes in classical literature: synecdocheequivalenceallegoryetc. Chapter 33 is a famous demonstration of variety, where Erasmus illustrates variations on the sentence, "Your letter delighted me greatly. Not divided into chapters, but does address 11 separate methods of using abundant subject matter. Here Erasmus uses a more dialectical approach, and typically gives a few lines of theory followed by many illustrations from classical sources. Erasmus' purpose was to contribute to the existing scholarship Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam: On Copia of Words and Ideas style. Erasmus wrote Copia while a professor at the University of Cambridge in He was teaching Greekbut between courses composed several texts designed to instruct Latin. Copia was one such text, perhaps as an attempt to expand on Quintillian 's rhetorical guide, Institutio Oratoria. The first chapter of book 10 in Quintillian's Oratoria is titled " De copia verborum ". This is quite possibly where Erasmus received his most direct inspiration for the book. In that 10th chapter, Quintillian declined to Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam: On Copia of Words and Ideas examples for employing the abundant style, on the grounds that each individual case requires a unique solution. This left the door open for Erasmus to detail the abundant style in Copia. Erasmus acknowledges Quintillian in the preface, and borrows from him and other classical authors throughout Copiasometimes citing, sometimes not. As further revisions of Copia are printed, Erasmus becomes increasingly careful to give credit to previous authors where it is due. If Quintillian was the philosophical inspiration for Copiahis friend John Colet was most practically Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam: On Copia of Words and Ideas. Colet and Erasmus had designs on replacing Medieval teaching with classical Greek and Latin writings. While Erasmus was at Cambridge, Colet was teaching at St. Paul's school in London. Colet requested that Erasmus pen something on rhetoric for him to teach at St. Paul's, and Erasmus presented him with Copiadedicating the book to Colet in the preface. While designed as a university textbook, Copia enjoyed far broader appeal. The book was immensely popular in England and in Europe, at least 85 editions of the book were printed in Erasmus' own lifetime, and countless more after that. Erasmus made three separate revisions to the original text, adding chapters each time. The original edition contained chapters, which swelled to in the final version that Erasmus completed before his death. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. 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Copia: Foundations of the Abundant Style - Wikipedia More specifically, however, his ideas and overall direction betray the influence of Lorenzo Valla, whose works he treasured. Like Valla, who had attacked biblical textual criticism with a vengeance and proved the so-called Donation of Constantine to be a forgery, Erasmus contributed importantly to Christian philology. Also like Valla, he philosophically espoused a kind of Christian hedonismjustifying earthly pleasure from a religious perspective. He described himself as a poet and orator rather than an inquirer after truth. His one major philosophical effort, a Christian defense of free willwas thunderously answered by Martin Luther. Although his writings are a well of good sense, they are seldom profound and are predominantly derivative. In Latin eloquence, on the other hand, he was preeminent, both as stylist and theorist. His graceful and abundant Ciceronian prose helped shape the character of European style. Eloquent, humane, and profoundly sensible, Erasmus earned a golden reputation that has not forsaken him since his death. His good repute owes much to his magisterial prose style, which is infused with judiciousness and self-control. His one brief easing of this control, however, produced his most original Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam: On Copia of Words and Ideas. In he composed his Ciceronian rhetorical manual De copia verborum et rerum On Copia of Words and Ideas and published his satirical Moriae encomium Praise of Folly. These two works have much in common. De copia concerns the stylistic strategy of creating abundant variations on common ideas. Praise of Folly is a case in point: a book-length set of variations on the idea of folly. In applying the copia strategy to human affairs, Erasmus found not only an attractive literary device but also a powerful medium of discovery. Praise of Folly is a true flight of fancy, a revelry of imagination that explores an unruly domain of topics, attacking a variety of social institutions and at times stretching the limits of then-permissible expression. The Erasmian conception of copiaas applied in Praise of Follyhad far-ranging consequences, from negative responses by the church to enthusiastic emulation by writers such as Rabelais, Montaigne, and Shakespeare and artists such as Pieter Bruegel the Elder and Giuseppe Arcimboldo. The influence of copia was also felt in architecture Giulio Romano and music Claudio Monteverdi. Hampered by religious repression and compressed more severely in time, the French movement lacked the intellectual fecundity and the programmatic unity of its Italian counterpart. In Rabelais and Montaigne, however, the development of humanistic methods and themes resulted in unique and memorable achievement. As a satirist and stylist in his hands French prose became a free, poetic formhe influenced writers as important as Jonathan SwiftLaurence Sterneand James Joyceand he may be seen as a major precursor of modernism. His five books concerning the deeds of the giant Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam: On Copia of Words and Ideas Gargantua and Pantagruel constitute a treasury of social criticism, an articulate statement of humanistic values, and a forceful, if often outrageous, manifesto of human rights. Rabelaisian satire took aim at every social institution and especially in Book III every intellectual discipline. Broadly learned and unflaggingly alert to jargon and sham, he repeatedly focused on dogmas that fetter creativity, institutional structures that reward hypocrisy, educational traditions that inspire laziness, and philosophical methodologies that obscure elemental reality. Rather than rebuild society, he seeks to amuse, edify, and refine it. His qualified endorsement Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam: On Copia of Words and Ideas human dignity is based on the healthy balance of mind and body, the sanctity of all true learning, and the authenticity of direct experience. Scholar, traveler, soldier, and statesman, Montaigne was, like Machiavelli, alert to both theory and practice. But while Machiavelli saw practice as forming the basis for sound theory, Montaigne perceived in human events a Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam: On Copia of Words and Ideas so overwhelming as to deny theoretical analysis. In an effort to make his inquiry more inclusive and unsparing, Montaigne made himself the subject of his book, demonstrating through hundreds of personal anecdotes and admissions the ineluctable diversity of a single human spirit. His essays, which seem to move freely from one subject or viewpoint to another, are often in fact carefully organized dialectical structures that draw the reader, through thesis and antithesis, stated subject and relevant association, toward a multidimensional understanding of morality and history. Human dignity, he implies, is indeed possible, but it lies less in heroic achievement