Renaissance literature

John Skelton is a central literary figure and the leading poet during the first thirty years of Tudor rule. Nevertheless, he remains challenging and even contradictory for modern audiences.

This book aims to provide an authoritative guide to this complex poet and his works, setting him in his historical, religious, and social contexts. Beginning with an exploration of his life and career, it goes on to cover all the major aspects of his poetry, from the literary traditions in which he wrote and the form of his compositions to the manuscript contexts and later reception. Contributors: Tom Betteridge, Julia Boffey, John Burrow, David Carlson, Helen Cooper, Elisabeth Dutton, A.S.G. Edwards, Jane Griffiths, Nadine Kuipers, Carol Meale, John Scattergood, Sebastian Sobecki, Greg Waite

The book takes an interdisciplinary approach and covers the origins of the Italian Renaissance through the Baroque period. It is comprised of fifteen chapters, organized chronologically, along with an introduction and conclusion. As the Renaissance is central to the teaching of Western Civilization courses, often functioning as a bridge between first and second semesters, this book will help provide background to the social, cultural, and political scene in Italy between the Medieval and Modern eras.

BISLAM. Bibliotheca Scriptorum Latinorum Medii Recentiorisque Aevi. II Censimento onomastico e letterario degli autori latini del medioevo. Identificazione, classificazione per genere letterario e bibliografia fondamentale è un repertorio onomastico, biografico, bibliografico e storico-letterario della letteratura mediolatina. Il volume offre agli studiosi e ai catalogatori un ausilio alla risoluzione dei problemi di identificazione degli autori attivi tra la fine del V e l’inizio del XVI secolo, fornendo sintetiche notizie biografiche, un elenco delle varianti dei loro nomi in latino e nelle lingue moderne, nonché un primo orientamento bibliografico, con l'indicazione dei principali generi letterari delle loro opere. Gli strumenti di ricerca dei quali è dotato il cd-rom che correda l’opera permettono un rapido reperimento delle informazioni contenute nel volume, consentendo anche di incrociare numerosi parametri onomastici, biografici, cronologici e storico-letterari. Con questa nuova edizione della Bibliotheca Scriptorum Latinorum Medii Recentiorisque Aevi, la Società Internazionale per lo Studio del Medioevo Latino porta a compimento la pubblicazione dei risultati di dodici anni di ricerca che hanno prodotto il catalogo bio-bibliografico, onomastico e letterario degli autori latini del medioevo. Essa comprende 13.174 voci su altrettanti autori e 83.124 varianti dei loro nomi. Mentre la prima edizione, pubblicata nel 2003, censiva circa 5.300 autori e 12.500 varianti nominali, questa edizione, che comprende la prima al suo interno, va ampiamente oltre, non soltanto per il numero di autori trattati, ma per la quantità di informazioni offerte su ciascuno di essi. Infatti, oltre alle diverse forme dei nomi, fornisce anche le date nelle quali essi furono attivi, l'indicazione dei momenti più importanti della loro carriera, dei generi letterari che hanno praticato e brevi note che spiegano i principali problemi di identificazione e di attribuzione delle loro opere. Ciascuna notizia è corredata dei riferimenti alle fonti consultate. Le informazioni presenti sono il risultato dello spoglio integrale di 47 repertori specialistici, scelti per affidabilità e completezza. I dati estratti sono stati valutati criticamente e corretti conformemente agli studi recenti più autorevoli, integrandoli con un numero quanto mai ampio di edizioni, saggi specialistici, enciclopedie, bibliografie e cataloghi. Corredata da un cd-rom, l’opera si configura attualmente come il più esauriente repertorio onomastico e bio-bibliografico sugli autori della letteratura latina medievale.

Early literary instances of artificial humanoid and intelligent systems anticipate in a general way the kinds of thematic issues that cyborgs, androids, and intelligent networks like supercomputers bring up for the contemporary notion of the posthuman, understood as a condition in which the human and the machine are becoming increasingly intermingled. Humans have never really been autonomous entities, but rather have always been intimately interdependent upon their environments and tools. And their dreams of intelligent tools even extend back into the era of ancient Rome and Greece, as I will describe below. Thus the seemingly modern idea of a reciprocal dependency upon mechanical devices is just a variation of a much older theme.

The tale of a meeting between Leonardo and Savonarola in the summer of 1495, later reported by Vasari (1550 and 1568) but confirmed by a memorandum remained in Leonardo's possession (Codex Atlanticus, f. 628 r), which refers explicitly to a "mission" assigned to him (presumably by Ludovico Sforza) to go to Florence, in order to get (through a competent mediator, probably Bernardo Rucellai) a detailed report about the new political rules promoted by the friar, lends credibility to a hypothesis of comparison between their anthropological conceptions, especially as they emerge from their "transfigured" use of the prophetic semantics, despite their shared repudiation of astrological quackery. If, on the one
hand, Savonarola's preaching does not have any properly predictive character, in terms of intentional "divination", standing rather as a projection or representation of the contingency of the current days, in purely political terms, Leonardo's riddles, which he literally called "prophecies", on the other hand - and similarly - transform the genre of presages or predictions into entertainment tools for courtly audiences, that, however, in some cases, become a vehicle for a critical evaluation of the troubles of contemporary society. The likelihood that, on the occasion of his convocation in Florence in 1495, Leonardo was able to listen to Savonarola's sermons, so steeped in apocalyptic prophecy, may provide an
explanation to the appearance of writings called "prophecies", among his notes, just in the last five years of the century. Their underlying vision of man, clearly pessimistic, offers significant points of contact with the negative anthropology advocated by Savonarola's preaching, which also makes use of animal apology, especially in the conceptual and ideological interpretation of the "anti-human" conflictuality among men, that makes them "beasts" towards themselves, in a sort of anticipation of Hobbes' famous motto homo homini
lupus.

SESSION I: INTERTEXT AND GENERIC FORM
(sponsored by RSA's Humanism discipline)

"Parody and the Abstraction of Character"
Samuel Fallon, SUNY Geneseo, USA

"Characters in Search of a Plot:
Intertextual Dynamics in Gascoigne’s Adventures of Master F. J."
Robert H. F. Carver, University of Durham, UK

"Character As Meme"
Katherine Schaap Williams, University of Toronto, CAN


SESSION II: TECHNIQUE AND TECHNOLOGY
(sponsored by RSA's Humanism discipline)

"Poor Painted Shadows: Non-Shakespearean Characterization in Shakespeare"
Lara Bovilsky, University of Oregon, USA

"'Sparks of living fire': Ethopoeia and Ovid’s Heroides in the works of Christopher Marlowe"
Asa Olson, Gustavus Adolphus University, USA

"Navel-Gazing and Performance:
The Creation of Character in Ralph Josselin’s Diary (1641-1683)"
Anne M. Myers, University of Missouri, USA

A SHORT HISTORY OF THE RENAISSANCE IN EUROPE (published November 26, 2016) constitutes the third edition of the THE RENAISSANCE IN EUROPE first published in 2005 (London: Laurence King; New York: McGraw-Hill). Attached are final proofs of the front matter, including Table of Contents and Introduction. The blurb from the original edition: Usually portrayed as a period dominated by the extraordinary achievements of great men, leading scholar Margaret L. King recasts the Renaissance as a more complex cultural movement rooted in a unique urban society that was itself the product of many factors and interactions. These included commerce, papal and imperial ambitions, artistic patronage, scientific discovery, aristocratic and popular violence, legal precedents, peasant migrations, famine, plague and invasion. Together with literary and artistic achievements, therefore, today's Renaissance history includes the study of power, wealth, gender, class, honour, shame, ritual and other categories of historical investigation opened up in recent years. Incorporating the most recent research, Professor King traces the diffusion of the Renaissance from Italy to the rest of Europe.

In 1506 Pietro Bembo decided not to follow a political career in the Republic of Venice, and to devote himself to study. He did not succeed to settle in Rome, but, thanks to Elisabetta Gonzaga, he was received by the Duke of Urbino, where he lived until 1512. These years were crucial for the preparation of Prose della volgar lingua and his collection of Rime. The letters he wrote in this period are considered, and throw light upon the working out of his literary ideas, where Petrarch was a dominating model and which eventually brought him to turn away from the courtly life. For this reason later in his life he may have eliminated a good number of letters written in these years. Some dubious datations of his epistolary are discussed.

Alla metà del Cinquecento, Federico Grisone, gentiluomo napoletano dava per la prima volta alle stampe un libro sull’arte di ammaestrare il cavallo «per l’uso della guerra» e sui segreti per «emendarne i vitii». L’opera ebbe subito un enorme successo e fu ben presto emulata dai libri di altri autori. Nasceva così un vero e proprio genere letterario, quello del trattato equestre, la cui tradizione, tra alterne vicende, è giunta viva e vitale sino ai nostri giorni. Non è un caso che quell’opera fosse stampata in Italia, visto che nel nostro paese tra XV e XVI secolo venne elaborata una nuova cultura di corte in cui l’equitazione aveva un ruolo fondamentale. All’epoca, i cavallerizzi italiani erano contesi dalle corti di tutta Europa e i rampolli dell’aristocrazia di tutto il continente valicavano le Alpi per perfezionarsi nell’arte di montare a cavallo presso celebri maestri. Seguendo il filo rosso della trattatistica equestre, questo libro ripercorre la storia dell’equitazione italiana ed europea, raccontandone le ricche implicazioni culturali, l’evoluzione delle tecniche e i numerosi intrecci con i grandi avvenimenti della storia europea. Una vicenda costellata di personaggi circondati da un’aura di leggendaria abilità, di dispute tra scuole contrapposte e di imprese memorabili. Una storia che dal Cinquecento si dipana sino agli inizi del XX secolo, quando di nuovo un italiano, Federico Caprilli, rivoluzionò l’equitazione mondiale, ideando la tecnica di salto degli ostacoli tutt’oggi in uso.
http://worksofchivalry.com/it/il-libro/

Le 28 avril 1529, Geofroy Tory publie L’art & Science de la deue & vraye Proportion des Lettres Attiques… Tory y prône la restauration de l’éloquence gallique vantée par Lucien et symbolisée par l’Hercule gaulois assimilé pour l’occasion à François Ier. La prolixité et la prodigalité de l’antique modèle herculéen l’engagent dans une digression sur la notion même de libéralité et d’abondance et son contrepoint, l’avarice. Se posant tour à tour comme récipiendaire et comme dispensateur de largesses supérieures, Tory exalte un modèle dans lequel celui qui manie les arts libéraux, à la manière antique, fait profiter ses admirateurs des munificences de sa science en concordance avec le modèle cicéronien qui lui sert d’exempla. Tory se place ainsi sous le patronage d’une figure idéale chez qui l’éthique la plus exigeante passe par une splendide libéralité, consacrant ses revenus au service de l’État et au profit du plus grand nombre tout en étant impliqué dans l’action publique et les responsabilités politiques. Le Champ fleury devient alors métaphore de la bienfaisance, reflet des idéaux nouveaux, parfaitement incarnés dans les formes artistiques dont il traite et qui sont à l’image de ce que François 1er devrait être à l’égard des humanistes : « libéral ».

The paper is an analysis of a funeral oration by Jan Kochanowski (1530-1584). The oration was written for the funeral of Kochanowski's brother, Kacper in 1577. The author analyses the speech as a sample of a rhetorical genre belonging to the genus demonstrativum. He also puts the speech in the context of poetical works by Kochanowski.

https://www.figuratiomundi.net

Im Rahmen des trinationalen Graduiertenkollegs »Erzählen, Weltverstehen und-darstellen in Mittelalter und Renaissance: Möglichkeiten der Integration nationaler Forschungsansätze und Schwerpunkte« (Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Université Clermont-Auvergne-Università di Pisa) stehen ab dem 1. Januar 2021 an der FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg vier Plätze zur Promotion zur Verfügung.

Discourse(s) of Life and Death: The Sidneys, Mornay and Shakespeare On 25th May 1572, Queen Elizabeth granted the then 17-year-old Philip Sidney permission to travel to Europe. Placed under the care of Elizabeth’s important courtier and envoy Sir Francis Walsingham in Paris, Sidney was there to witness the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre. Sidney shared his experiences of the bloody episode with his mentor Hubert Languet and Philippe de Mornay, an aristocratic French Protestant theologian and political theorist. To purge himself of his own memories of the fateful night, Mornay later penned the treatise Excellent discours de la vie et de la mort (1576), a Christian-Senecan meditation on life and death, which Sidney’s younger sister Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke, subsequently translated to A Discourse of Life and Death (1592) as a way of dealing with the grief of losing a father, mother, brother and child all in the one year. As its three later reprints testify, her translation became very popular. We know that Shakespeare read it, as certain textual associations can be traced in Measure for Measure, Much Ado About Nothing and Hamlet. As well as addressing the more well-established knowledge that Shakespeare was influenced by the scepticism of Michel de Montaigne’s Essays (courtesy of John Florio’s translation), as can be observed especially in Hamlet, this paper will investigate how Mornay’s and the Sidneys’ ideas of stoicism inspired Shakespeare and informed his own meditations on life and the fear of death. This will help to elucidate a broader discourse on the theological impact of Mornay and the Sidneys on Shakespeare’s engagement in a kind of private therapy, helping him to address the themes that concerned him: human suffering as a part of everyday life, doubt, mercy and the fear of death.

Polish translation of the opening part of Book One of Goslicius' De optimo Senatore (1568).
In O senatorze doskonałym studia. Prace upamiętniające postać i twórczość Wawrzyńca Goślickiego pod redakcja Aleksandra Stępkowskiego (Warszawa: Kancelaria Senatu, 2007) p.216-226

This book investigates how writers and readers of Renaissance literature deployed ‘kinesic intelligence’, a combination of pre-reflective bodily response and reflective interpretation. Through analyses of authors including Petrarch, Rabelais, and Shakespeare, the book explores how embodied cognition, historical context, and literary style interact to generate and shape responses to texts. It suggests that what was reborn in the Renaissance was partly a critical sense of the capacities and complexities of bodily movement. The linguistic ingenuity of humanism set bodies in motion in complex and paradoxical ways. Writers engaged anew with the embodied grounding of language, prompting readers to deploy sensorimotor attunement. Actors shaped their bodies according to kinesic intelligence molded by theatrical experience and skill, provoking audiences to respond to their most subtle movements. An approach grounded in kinesic intelligence enables us to re-examine metaphor, rhetoric, ethics, gender, and violence. The book will appeal to scholars and students of English, French, and Italian Renaissance literature and to researchers in the cognitive humanities, cognitive sciences, and theatre studies.

Qui dit nouvelle au XVIe siècle, dit bons tours, bons mots et autres facéties. Cependant, la nouvelle 10 de l’Heptaméron se distingue par son sujet romanesque : l’amour impossible et passionné d’Amadour et de Floride. Ces deux héros espagnols, loin d’appartenir au personnel traditionnel et stéréotypé de la nouvelle, incarnent deux facettes de la passion, les transports de l’amour furieux et la sublimation de l’amour vertueux. Le recours à des héros passionnés contribue donc à l’ambiguïté générique du texte. Toutefois, cette apparente ambiguïté pourrait être un leurre ou stratagème narratif, porté par le personnage d’Amadour, afin de mettre en avant la dimension exemplaire du récit.

Il volume è il risultato di una ricerca sull’atteggiamento di medici e filosofi di fronte alla peste, dalle prime reazioni nel ‘300 fino al maturo ‘400, con particolare attenzione all’umanesimo fiorentino e alla figura di Marsilio Ficino. Si è voluto mostrare come l’avvento del morbo abbia profondamente inciso sulla produzione della letteratura filosofica, accelerando l’osmosi tra i saperi e le tendenze culturali, calamitando l’attenzione di molti sull’urgenza medica. La trattazione si concentra sulle opere di Marsilio Ficino, soprattutto sul Consilio contro la pestilentia, pubblicato per la prima volta a Firenze nel 1481 e da allora testo di riferimento per la tradizione posteriore. Attraverso l’analisi delle fonti e della fortuna di quest’opera si possono rileggere le questioni fondamentali che sono al centro della letteratura medico-filosofica contro la peste. In Appendice si presenta un’edizione accompagnata da alcune annotazioni critiche, con un Glossario essenziale di termini notevoli.