The Early Modern Period is increasingly perceived as a time of antagonism and conflict in different discursive fields. In the context of this topic the Collaborative Research Centre (SFB) 573 organized an international conference in March 2010 on "Para-/Textual Negotiations between Poetry and Philosophy in the Early Modern Period." The results of this conference are presented in this volume. The specific question of the book results from combining two key topics: the agonal relationship between poetry and philosophy, and the specificity through which this agon not only occurs in the text itself but even at the fringe between text and framework texts (paratexts and epitexts).

Cardinal Bessarion is renowned for having bridged the frontier that existed between the Western world of Latin and the Eastern world of Greek. As an integrative intermediary and humanistic patron of culture, he served as a witness to the epoch s diverse and momentous processes of inclusion and exclusion. The articles attempt to reconstruct the mechanisms of cultural integration and disintegration that marked the Early Modern Era."