Oren Margolis
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781526117045
- eISBN:
- 9781526141910
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781526117045.003.0006
- Subject:
- Art, Art History
The foundation myths of late medieval cities and states were never simply about origins: they were above all about destiny. In the fifteenth century, the combination of humanist methods and models, ...
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The foundation myths of late medieval cities and states were never simply about origins: they were above all about destiny. In the fifteenth century, the combination of humanist methods and models, newly available source materials, and changing domestic and international political circumstances provided the impetus for the continued development of these myths as well as the creation of new ones. Yet even in Italy, not all eyes looked to Rome. The Carolingian foundation myth of Florence, in which Charlemagne’s supposed rebuilding of the city was used to explain the pro-French orientation of the commune and its Guelph elite, is perhaps the most well-known of these myths, but also an example of an Italian city defining itself in relation to a foreign power. This essay focuses on another element of Quattrocento myth-making culture: the treatment of northern Italy’s Gaulish past in the writings of some of the region’s humanists (e.g. (Antonio Cornazzano and Alberto Cattaneo), and the role of these writings in Franco-Milanese relations before and during the outbreak of the Italian Wars and the French domination of Milan.Less
The foundation myths of late medieval cities and states were never simply about origins: they were above all about destiny. In the fifteenth century, the combination of humanist methods and models, newly available source materials, and changing domestic and international political circumstances provided the impetus for the continued development of these myths as well as the creation of new ones. Yet even in Italy, not all eyes looked to Rome. The Carolingian foundation myth of Florence, in which Charlemagne’s supposed rebuilding of the city was used to explain the pro-French orientation of the commune and its Guelph elite, is perhaps the most well-known of these myths, but also an example of an Italian city defining itself in relation to a foreign power. This essay focuses on another element of Quattrocento myth-making culture: the treatment of northern Italy’s Gaulish past in the writings of some of the region’s humanists (e.g. (Antonio Cornazzano and Alberto Cattaneo), and the role of these writings in Franco-Milanese relations before and during the outbreak of the Italian Wars and the French domination of Milan.
William Stenhouse
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781526117045
- eISBN:
- 9781526141910
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781526117045.003.0007
- Subject:
- Art, Art History
This essay examines attitudes towards the display, study and protection of Roman antiquities, including inscriptions, bas-reliefs, and statues, in southern France, looking particularly at the towns ...
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This essay examines attitudes towards the display, study and protection of Roman antiquities, including inscriptions, bas-reliefs, and statues, in southern France, looking particularly at the towns of Arles, Nîmes and Vienne. There are plenty of examples of the destruction of ancient remains in this period, especially ancient structures that obstructed modern building projects, but various people and institutions also laid claim to Roman material. Kings and their lieutenants removed objects, but also told towns to maintain what they had. Civic governments began to display pieces that affirmed their cities’ ancient past and tried to preserve ancient buildings, sometimes by collaborating with religious orders. Collectively, the efforts of these different individuals and institutions contributed to a shared sense of local heritage.Less
This essay examines attitudes towards the display, study and protection of Roman antiquities, including inscriptions, bas-reliefs, and statues, in southern France, looking particularly at the towns of Arles, Nîmes and Vienne. There are plenty of examples of the destruction of ancient remains in this period, especially ancient structures that obstructed modern building projects, but various people and institutions also laid claim to Roman material. Kings and their lieutenants removed objects, but also told towns to maintain what they had. Civic governments began to display pieces that affirmed their cities’ ancient past and tried to preserve ancient buildings, sometimes by collaborating with religious orders. Collectively, the efforts of these different individuals and institutions contributed to a shared sense of local heritage.
Warren Boutcher
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780198739661
- eISBN:
- 9780191831126
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198739661.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
This major two-volume study offers an interdisciplinary analysis of Montaigne’s Essais and their fortunes in early modern Europe and the modern Western university. Volume 1 focuses on contexts from ...
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This major two-volume study offers an interdisciplinary analysis of Montaigne’s Essais and their fortunes in early modern Europe and the modern Western university. Volume 1 focuses on contexts from within Montaigne’s own milieu, and on the ways in which his book made him a patron-author or instant classic in the eyes of his editor Marie de Gournay and his promoter Justus Lipsius. Volume 2 focuses on the reader-writers across Europe who used the Essais to make their own works, from corrected editions and translations in print, to life-writing and personal records in manuscript. The two volumes work together to offer a new picture of the book’s significance in literary and intellectual history. The school of Montaigne potentially included everyone in early modern Europe with occasion and means to read and write for themselves and for their friends and family, unconstrained by an official function or scholastic institution. The Essais were shaped by the post-Reformation battle to regulate the educated individual’s judgement in reading and acting upon the two books bequeathed by God to man. The book of scriptures and the book of nature were becoming more accessible through print and manuscript cultures. But at the same time that access was being mediated more intensively by teachers such as clerics and humanists, by censors and institutions, by learned authors of past and present, and by commentaries and glosses upon those authors. Montaigne enfranchised the unofficial reader-writer with liberties of judgement offered and taken in the specific historical conditions of his era.Less
This major two-volume study offers an interdisciplinary analysis of Montaigne’s Essais and their fortunes in early modern Europe and the modern Western university. Volume 1 focuses on contexts from within Montaigne’s own milieu, and on the ways in which his book made him a patron-author or instant classic in the eyes of his editor Marie de Gournay and his promoter Justus Lipsius. Volume 2 focuses on the reader-writers across Europe who used the Essais to make their own works, from corrected editions and translations in print, to life-writing and personal records in manuscript. The two volumes work together to offer a new picture of the book’s significance in literary and intellectual history. The school of Montaigne potentially included everyone in early modern Europe with occasion and means to read and write for themselves and for their friends and family, unconstrained by an official function or scholastic institution. The Essais were shaped by the post-Reformation battle to regulate the educated individual’s judgement in reading and acting upon the two books bequeathed by God to man. The book of scriptures and the book of nature were becoming more accessible through print and manuscript cultures. But at the same time that access was being mediated more intensively by teachers such as clerics and humanists, by censors and institutions, by learned authors of past and present, and by commentaries and glosses upon those authors. Montaigne enfranchised the unofficial reader-writer with liberties of judgement offered and taken in the specific historical conditions of his era.
Warren Boutcher
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780198123743
- eISBN:
- 9780191829437
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198123743.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature, European Literature
This major two-volume study offers an interdisciplinary analysis of Montaigne’s Essais and their fortunes in early modern Europe and the modern Western university. Volume 1 focuses on contexts from ...
More
This major two-volume study offers an interdisciplinary analysis of Montaigne’s Essais and their fortunes in early modern Europe and the modern Western university. Volume 1 focuses on contexts from within Montaigne’s own milieu, and on the ways in which his book made him a patron-author or instant classic in the eyes of his editor Marie de Gournay and his promoter Justus Lipsius. Volume 2 focuses on the reader-writers across Europe who used the Essais to make their own works, from corrected editions and translations in print, to life-writing and personal records in manuscript. The two volumes work together to offer a new picture of the book’s significance in literary and intellectual history. The school of Montaigne potentially included everyone in early modern Europe with occasion and means to read and write for themselves and for their friends and family, unconstrained by an official function or scholastic institution. The Essais were shaped by the post-Reformation battle to regulate the educated individual’s judgement in reading and acting upon the two books bequeathed by God to man. The book of scriptures and the book of nature were becoming more accessible through print and manuscript cultures. But at the same time that access was being mediated more intensively by teachers such as clerics and humanists, by censors and institutions, by learned authors of past and present, and by commentaries and glosses upon those authors. Montaigne enfranchised the unofficial reader-writer with liberties of judgement offered and taken in the specific historical conditions of his era.Less
This major two-volume study offers an interdisciplinary analysis of Montaigne’s Essais and their fortunes in early modern Europe and the modern Western university. Volume 1 focuses on contexts from within Montaigne’s own milieu, and on the ways in which his book made him a patron-author or instant classic in the eyes of his editor Marie de Gournay and his promoter Justus Lipsius. Volume 2 focuses on the reader-writers across Europe who used the Essais to make their own works, from corrected editions and translations in print, to life-writing and personal records in manuscript. The two volumes work together to offer a new picture of the book’s significance in literary and intellectual history. The school of Montaigne potentially included everyone in early modern Europe with occasion and means to read and write for themselves and for their friends and family, unconstrained by an official function or scholastic institution. The Essais were shaped by the post-Reformation battle to regulate the educated individual’s judgement in reading and acting upon the two books bequeathed by God to man. The book of scriptures and the book of nature were becoming more accessible through print and manuscript cultures. But at the same time that access was being mediated more intensively by teachers such as clerics and humanists, by censors and institutions, by learned authors of past and present, and by commentaries and glosses upon those authors. Montaigne enfranchised the unofficial reader-writer with liberties of judgement offered and taken in the specific historical conditions of his era.
Fiona Cox
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- November 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780198810810
- eISBN:
- 9780191847950
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198810810.003.0007
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval, Poetry and Poets: Classical, Early, and Medieval
This is one of the few chapters in the present volume that address the role of women in Virgilian translation practices. More specifically, Cox focuses on Marie de Gournay’s translation of Aeneid 2. ...
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This is one of the few chapters in the present volume that address the role of women in Virgilian translation practices. More specifically, Cox focuses on Marie de Gournay’s translation of Aeneid 2. While de Gournay’s translation is marked by imprecisions, it also conveys her sense of pride—a pride she takes in breaching the stronghold of men as she places herself into the lineage of French translators of Virgil. The author argues that de Gournay uses her translation as part of a struggle for sexual equality, a struggle that is especially intensified by her loneliness and sense of alienation within her own time and culture.Less
This is one of the few chapters in the present volume that address the role of women in Virgilian translation practices. More specifically, Cox focuses on Marie de Gournay’s translation of Aeneid 2. While de Gournay’s translation is marked by imprecisions, it also conveys her sense of pride—a pride she takes in breaching the stronghold of men as she places herself into the lineage of French translators of Virgil. The author argues that de Gournay uses her translation as part of a struggle for sexual equality, a struggle that is especially intensified by her loneliness and sense of alienation within her own time and culture.
Tom Conley
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816669646
- eISBN:
- 9781452946573
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816669646.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This introductory chapter examines the haptic eye of the snail described on Francesco Colonna’s novel Songe de Poliphile. The chapter outlines two guiding lines of discussion which underlie the ...
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This introductory chapter examines the haptic eye of the snail described on Francesco Colonna’s novel Songe de Poliphile. The chapter outlines two guiding lines of discussion which underlie the relationship between poetry and topography. The first is that during the Age of Discovery in Renaissance France, the eye wanders about and literally touches a world of unforeseen expanse. The errant eye then was enmeshed and lost in the environment. Endowed with a sense of tactility, it moves forward and backward, now alert and then withdrawn, about and around its ambient world. The second is that the poet’s vision is much like that of the topographer who sees, discerns, and orders the world in consort with the art of illustration. The poet is like a cartographer with the task to describe the world by mixing images, visual designs, and both aural and optical traits of language.Less
This introductory chapter examines the haptic eye of the snail described on Francesco Colonna’s novel Songe de Poliphile. The chapter outlines two guiding lines of discussion which underlie the relationship between poetry and topography. The first is that during the Age of Discovery in Renaissance France, the eye wanders about and literally touches a world of unforeseen expanse. The errant eye then was enmeshed and lost in the environment. Endowed with a sense of tactility, it moves forward and backward, now alert and then withdrawn, about and around its ambient world. The second is that the poet’s vision is much like that of the topographer who sees, discerns, and orders the world in consort with the art of illustration. The poet is like a cartographer with the task to describe the world by mixing images, visual designs, and both aural and optical traits of language.
Caroline Callard
- Published in print:
- 2022
- Published Online:
- June 2022
- ISBN:
- 9780198849476
- eISBN:
- 9780191883590
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198849476.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Cultural History, European Early Modern History
A major contribution of this work is to characterize the ‘spectral moment’ of early modernity. Two developments in the sixteenth century characterize this moment in particular: the presence of ghosts ...
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A major contribution of this work is to characterize the ‘spectral moment’ of early modernity. Two developments in the sixteenth century characterize this moment in particular: the presence of ghosts as an autonomous rhetorical commonplace freed from the confines of theology or votive literature, and the striking epistemological promotion of ghosts as objects of a knowledge legitimised by natural philosophy. By highlighting the ‘spectral moment’ of early modernity, Spectralities in the Renaissance foregrounds the agency of ghosts particularly in property disputes over haunted houses as they were tried before civil courts in Paris, Tours and Bordeaux. Ghosts in these cases did not simply appear as products of their dire and distressing times but rather they had an active role in the resolution of conflicts. Conflicts over haunted houses occurred within both communities (Protestant and Catholic) and families at a time of civil war. And they involved both lay and religious powers, who strove sometimes to confirm their jurisdiction over these affairs and sometimes to thwart the actions of spectral agents. The chronology of this book’s enquiry stops on the brink of trials for superstition conducted against ghosts, by the middle of the seventeenth century. At that precise moment ghosts lost their agency in justice and their very existential substance. A concluding chapter considers the consequences of this pragmatic history of ghosts for the Enlightenment and beyond.Less
A major contribution of this work is to characterize the ‘spectral moment’ of early modernity. Two developments in the sixteenth century characterize this moment in particular: the presence of ghosts as an autonomous rhetorical commonplace freed from the confines of theology or votive literature, and the striking epistemological promotion of ghosts as objects of a knowledge legitimised by natural philosophy. By highlighting the ‘spectral moment’ of early modernity, Spectralities in the Renaissance foregrounds the agency of ghosts particularly in property disputes over haunted houses as they were tried before civil courts in Paris, Tours and Bordeaux. Ghosts in these cases did not simply appear as products of their dire and distressing times but rather they had an active role in the resolution of conflicts. Conflicts over haunted houses occurred within both communities (Protestant and Catholic) and families at a time of civil war. And they involved both lay and religious powers, who strove sometimes to confirm their jurisdiction over these affairs and sometimes to thwart the actions of spectral agents. The chronology of this book’s enquiry stops on the brink of trials for superstition conducted against ghosts, by the middle of the seventeenth century. At that precise moment ghosts lost their agency in justice and their very existential substance. A concluding chapter considers the consequences of this pragmatic history of ghosts for the Enlightenment and beyond.
