English Humanism and the Reception of Virgil c. 1400-1550 reassesses how the spread of Renaissance humanism in England impacted the reception of Virgil. It begins with the first signs of humanist influence in the fifteenth century, and ends at the height of the English Renaissance during the mid-Tudor period. This period witnessed the first extant English translations of Virgil's Aeneid, by William Caxton (1490), Gavin Douglas (1513), and the Earl of Surrey (c. 1543). It also marked the first printings of Virgil's works in England by Richard Pynson (c. 1515) and Wynkyn de Worde (1510s-1520s). Through a fine-grained analysis of surviving manuscripts and early printed editions, Matthew Day questions how and to what extent Renaissance humanism impacted readers' and translators' approaches to Virgil. Building on current scholarship in the fields of book history, classical reception, and translation studies, it draws attention to substantial continuities between the medieval and humanist reception of Virgil's works. Humanist study of Virgil, and indeed of classical poetry more generally, continued to draw many of its aims, methods, and conventions from well-established medieval traditions of learning. In emphasizing the very gradual pace of humanist development and the continuous influence of medieval scholarship, the book comes to a more qualified view of how humanism did and (just as importantly) did not affect Virgilian reading and translation. While recognizing humanist innovations and discoveries, it gives due attention to the understudied, yet far more numerous examples of consistency and traditionalism.

English Humanism and the Reception of Virgil c. 1400-1550 reassesses how the spread of Renaissance humanism in England impacted the reception of Virgil. It begins with the first signs of humanist influence in the fifteenth century, and ends at the height of the English Renaissance during the mid-Tudor period. This period witnessed the first extant English translations of Virgil's Aeneid, by William Caxton (1490), Gavin Douglas (1513), and the Earl of Surrey (c. 1543). It also marked the first printings of Virgil's works in England by Richard Pynson (c. 1515) and Wynkyn de Worde (1510s-1520s). Through a fine-grained analysis of surviving manuscripts and early printed editions, Matthew Day questions how and to what extent Renaissance humanism impacted readers' and translators' approaches to Virgil. Building on current scholarship in the fields of book history, classical reception, and translation studies, it draws attention to substantial continuities between the medieval and humanist reception of Virgil's works. Humanist study of Virgil, and indeed of classical poetry more generally, continued to draw many of its aims, methods, and conventions from well-established medieval traditions of learning. In emphasizing the very gradual pace of humanist development and the continuous influence of medieval scholarship, the book comes to a more qualified view of how humanism did and (just as importantly) did not affect Virgilian reading and translation. While recognizing humanist innovations and discoveries, it gives due attention to the understudied, yet far more numerous examples of consistency and traditionalism.

Scarlett Baron explores the works of two of the most admired and mythologized masters of nineteenth- and twentieth-century prose: Gustave Flaubert (1822-1880) and James Joyce (1882-1941). She uncovers the lifelong fascination that Joyce harboured for Flaubert and investigates how this heightened interest inflected his own creative practice.

The evolution of republican concepts compared to medieval and early modern traditions of political thought.

Today we associate the Renaissance with painting, sculpture, and architecture—the “major” arts. Yet contemporaries often held the “minor” arts—gem-studded goldwork, richly embellished armor, splendid tapestries and embroideries, music, and ephemeral multi-media spectacles—in much higher esteem. Isabella d’Este, Marchesa of Mantua, was typical of the Italian nobility: she bequeathed to her children precious stone vases mounted in gold, engraved gems, ivories, and antique bronzes and marbles; her favorite ladies-in-waiting, by contrast, received mere paintings. Renaissance patrons and observers extolled finely wrought luxury artifacts for their exquisite craftsmanship and the symbolic capital of their components; paintings and sculptures in modest materials, although discussed by some literati, were of lesser consequence. This book endeavors to return to the mainstream material long marginalized as a result of historical and ideological biases of the intervening centuries. The author analyzes how luxury arts went from being lofty markers of ascendancy and discernment in the Renaissance to being dismissed as “decorative” or “minor” arts—extravagant trinkets of the rich unworthy of the status of Art. Then, by re-examining the objects themselves and their uses in their day, she shows how sumptuous creations constructed the world and taste of Renaissance women and men.

After its rediscovery in 1417, Lucretius’s Epicurean didactic poem De Rerum Natura threatened to supply radicals and atheists with the one weapon unbelief had lacked in the Middle Ages: good answers. Scholars could now challenge Christian patterns of thought by employing the theory of atomistic physics, a sophisticated system that explained natural phenomena without appeal to divine participation, and argued powerfully against the immortality of the soul, the afterlife, and a creator God. Ada Palmer explores how Renaissance readers, such as Machiavelli, Pomponio Leto, and Montaigne, actually ingested and disseminated Lucretius, and the ways in which this process of reading transformed modern thought. She uncovers humanist methods for reconciling Christian and pagan philosophy, and shows how ideas of emergent order and natural selection, so critical to our current thinking, became embedded in Europe’s intellectual landscape before the seventeenth century. This heterodoxy circulated in the premodern world, not on the conspicuous stage of heresy trials and public debates, but in the classrooms, libraries, studies, and bookshops where quiet scholars met the ideas that would soon transform the world. Renaissance readers—poets and philologists rather than scientists—were moved by their love of classical literature to rescue Lucretius and his atomism, thereby injecting his theories back into scientific discourse. Palmer employs a new quantitative method for analyzing marginalia in manuscripts and printed books, exposing how changes in scholarly reading practices over the course of the sixteenth century gradually expanded Europe’s receptivity to radical science, setting the stage for the scientific revolution.

This volume explores the various strategies by which appropriate pasts were construed in scholarship, literature, art, and architecture in order to create “national”, regional, or local identities in late medieval and early modern Europe. Because authority was based on lineage, political and territorial claims were underpinned by historical arguments, either true or otherwise. Literature, scholarship, art, and architecture were pivotal media that were used to give evidence of the impressive old lineage of states, regions, or families. These claims were related not only to classical antiquity but also to other periods that were regarded as antiquities, such as the Middle Ages, especially the chivalric age. The authors of this volume analyse these intriguing early modern constructions of “antiquity” and investigate the ways in which they were applied in political, intellectual and artistic contexts in the period of 1400–1700. Contributors include: Barbara Arciszewska, Bianca De Divitiis, Karl Enenkel, Hubertus Günther, Thomas Haye, Harald Hendrix, Stephan Hoppe, Marc Laureys, Frédérique Lemerle, Coen Maas, Anne-Françoise Morel, Kristoffer Neville, Konrad Ottenheym, Yves Pauwels, Christian Peters, Christoph Pieper, David Rijser, Bernd Roling, Nuno Senos, Paul Smith, Pieter Vlaardingerbroek, and Matthew Walker.

This is a guide to the main developments in the history of British and Irish literature, charting some of the main features of literary language development and highlighting key language topics.