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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.
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