1st Edition
The Virgilian Tradition II Books and Their Readers in the Renaissance
The Virgilian Tradition II brings together thirteen essays by historian Craig Kallendorf.
The essays present a distinctive approach to the reception of the canonical classical author Virgil, that is focused around the early printed books through which that author was read and interpreted within early modern culture. Using the prefaces, dedicatory letters, and commentaries that accompanied the early modern editions of Virgil’s Eclogues, Georgics, Aeneid, and Appendix Virgiliana, they demonstrate how this paratextual material was used by early readers to develop a more nuanced interpretation of Virgil’s writings than twentieth-century scholars believed they were capable of. The approach developed throughout this volume shows how the emerging field of book history can enrich our understanding of the reception of Greek and Latin authors.
This book will appeal to scholars and students of early modern history, as well as those interested in book history and cultural history. (CS 1103).
Introduction
Part 1: Renaissance Readings of Virgil
1. Allusion as Reception: Virgil, Milton, and the Modern Reader
2. Historicizing the "Harvard School": Pessimistic Readings of the Aeneid in Italian Renaissance Scholarship
3. Representing the Other: Ercilla’s La Araucana, Virgil’s Aeneid, and the ‘New’ World Encounter
4. Epic and Tragedy – Virgil, La Cerda, Milton
5. Nicodemus Frischlin’s Dido: Virgil on the German Stage
6. The Neo-Latin Epic
Part 2: Early Books and Manuscripts, Mostly Virgilian
7. The Medium Is the Message: From Manuscript to the Hand Press to the Computer Age
8. Using Manuscripts and Early Printed Books
9. A Humanist Annotator of Virgil: Coluccio Salutati
10. Vergil and Printed Books, 1500-1800
11. Virgil and the Ethical Commentary: Plato, Aristotle, and the Function of Literature
12. Virgil in the Renaissance Classroom: From Toscanella’s Osservationi … sopra l’opere di Virgilio to the Exercitationes rhetoricae
13. Canon, Print, and the Virgilian Corpus
Biography
Craig Kallendorf is Professor of English and Classics at Texas A&M University, where he has taught since 1982. He is the author or editor of 27 books and more than 170 articles, book chapters, and reference work entries.
