Beyond Reception applies a new concept for analyzing cultural change, known as 'transformation', the study of Renaissance humanism. Traditional scholarship takes the Renaissance humanists at their word, that they were simply viewing the ancient world as it actually was and recreating its key features within their own culture. Initially modern studies in the classical tradition accepted this claim and saw this process as largely passive. 'Transformation theory' emphasizes the active role played by the receiving culture both in constructing a vision of the past and in transforming that vision into something that was a meaningful part of the later culture. A chapter than explains the terminology and workings of 'transformation theory' is followed by essays by nine established experts that suggest how the key disciplines of grammar, rhetoric, history, poetry, and philosophy in the Renaissance represent transformations of what went on in these fields in ancient Greece and Rome. The picture that emerges suggests that Renaissance humanism as it was actually practiced both received and transformed the classical past, at the same time as it constructed a vision of that past that still resonates today.

The portrayal of princes plays a central role in the historical literature of the European Renaissance. The sixteen contributions collected in this volume examine such portrayals in a broad variety of historiographical, biographical, and poetic texts. It emerges clearly that historical portrayals were not essentially bound by generic constraints but instead took the form of res gestae or historiae, discrete or collective biographies, panegyric, mirrors for princes, epic poetry, orations, even commonplace books - whatever the occasion called for. Beyond questions of genre, the chapters focus on narrative strategies and the transformation of ancient, medieval, and contemporary authors, as well as on the influence of political, cultural, intellectual, and social contexts. Four broad thematic foci inform the structure of this book: the virtues ascribed to the prince, the cultural and political pretensions inscribed in literary portraits, the historical and literary models on which these portraits were based, and the method that underlay them. The volume is rounded out by a critical summary that considers the portrayal of princes in humanist historiogrpahy from the point of view of transformation theory.

The success of the historiography of Humanism is one of the central phenomena in the history of scholarship in the Early Modern Age, but the reasons for this have to date never been satisfactorily explained. The authors of these conference proceedings search for answers by approaching the historical writings from different perspectives. They discuss both the semantics and the literary methods of the texts, as well as the social positions of the authors. Closely related to both themes is the question of the historical spaces dealt with in the works, in which the humanists show the way as far as the New World.

Inscriptions, coins, literary models and classical Latin are elements of ancient culture to which recourse was made in the Renaissance. To what extent did they, in the process, shape humanistic historiography? The authors discuss the question by investigating the consequences that using a particular language have on historical writings, and analyse how historiographical models were adapted to the contemporary environment. Finally, they ask how the humanistsa (TM) enthusiasm for ancient remains manifested itself in historiography.