The Accademia Pontaniana: A Model of a Humanist Network is an exploration of the vast intellectual networks which developed around the fifteenth century humanist Pontano. It includes the densely knit network which emerged in Naples, the Accademia Pontaniana, as well as the loosely knit networks which developed between the members of this academy and other humanists and academies outside of Naples. Shulamit Furstenberg-Levi points to the links between the Accademia Pontaniana and other sodalities in Southern Italy, and to the lineage between fifteenth century informal academies and sixteenth century institutional Academies. In this study recent sociological theory is applied to understand Renaissance academies and the vertical and horizontal links between them.

Beginning with Erich Auerbach's reflections on the Goethean concept of World Literature, Ottmar Ette unfolds the theory and practice of Literatures of the World. Today, only those literary theories that are oriented upon a history of movement are still capable of doing justice to the confusing diversity of highly dynamic, worldwide transformations. This is because they examine transareal pathways in the field of literature. This volume captures literary processes of exchange and transformation between the Mediterranean, Atlantic and Pacific as well as the interplay of different ways of narrating space and time. Thus, this volume speaks from a fractal point of view and unfolds multiple perspectives. Literatures of the World allows the reader to think in different logical frameworks at the same time, therefore shaping our future on the basis of the diversity of humankind.