{"title":"‘By consultation of elevated minds’: the role of paratexts in Giovanni Battista Calderari's comedies","authors":"Lies Verbaere","doi":"10.1111/rest.12901","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/rest.12901","url":null,"abstract":"Genette's Seuils considers the dramatic paratext as the odd one out, and, indeed, the early‐modern theatrical paratext has remained understudied. This article discusses the paratexts of the comedies of Giovanni Battista Calderari, a sixteenth‐century author quite neglected by scholars, whose works were published in Vicenza and Venice. By focusing on the paratexts of La Mora (The Moorish Woman, 1588), La schiava (The Slave Woman, 1589), and Armida (1600), the article stresses Calderari's attempts to clarify his poetic ideas and his endeavours to create a network of intellectuals and obtain their opinions about his work. These interlocutors belonged to the knights of Malta and the Vicenzan Accademia Olimpica, two circles to which Calderari himself belonged, but they also were authoritative Venetian intellectuals. His insertion of poems and letters that praise his person and work, reveals his attempt to promote himself and his writings. He tries to promote himself not only as a military man or a great Vicenzan poet, but as a scholar of theatre who is able to juggle poetic discourse and is worthy to be considered by intellectuals, though he ultimately seems to have failed to really assert himself on the Venetian cultural scene and the Vicenzan stage.","PeriodicalId":45351,"journal":{"name":"Renaissance Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-09-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78075044","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"DebapriyaSarkar, Possible Knowledge: The Literary Forms of Early Modern Science. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2023. 280 pp. $65.00. ISBN 978–1–5128‐2335‐6 (hb).","authors":"Alice Wickenden","doi":"10.1111/rest.12905","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/rest.12905","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45351,"journal":{"name":"Renaissance Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-09-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80901003","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The vernacularization of Paduan medicine and philosophy in the seventeenth century: Troilo Lancetta's Raccolta medica, et astrologica","authors":"Craig R. Martin","doi":"10.1111/rest.12899","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/rest.12899","url":null,"abstract":"In 1645 Troilo Lancetta saw to the publication of a compilation of texts, Raccolta medica, et astrologica, under the anagrammatic and implausible pseudonym Lootri Nacattel. Most of these texts were translations into the Italian vernacular. They include writings by Girolamo Cardano; Hippocrates; Aristotle, and his commentators; Girolamo Fracastoro; Lancetta’s teacher, the philosopher Cesare Cremonini; and a handful of ancient Greek and Latin historians, in addition to excerpts from Lancetta’s medical writings. The presentation of the selected texts advances a set of polemics against the practice of bloodletting as a cure for fevers and against astrology, especially its use in medicine. The collection employs a range of authorities both classical and recent to bring anti‐Galenic and anti‐astrological teachings, already present in the University of Padua, to a broader readership. This transfer reinforced Lancetta’s identity as an erudite expert in philosophy and in medicine, an identity that he cultivated in other publishing endeavors, which included Latin editions of Cremonini’s psychological and dialectical writings. Lancetta’s Raccolta reflects a sophisticated employment of medical humanism, which used Aristotelian and Hippocratic texts to undermine interpretations of Galen and promoted Cremonini’s teachings about Meteorology as part of arguments about the subalternation of medicine to philosophy, the vanity of astrology, and the denial of the predictive power of prodigious meteorological phenomena.","PeriodicalId":45351,"journal":{"name":"Renaissance Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-08-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86973740","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Reading the Religious Diversity of the Later Seventeenth‐Century Ottoman World: An Anglican Traveller's Perspective","authors":"Charles Beirouti","doi":"10.1111/rest.12888","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/rest.12888","url":null,"abstract":"In his Account of the Present Greek Church of 1722, Dr John Covel (1638–1722), an Anglican cleric and master of Christ's College, Cambridge, reflected on how human beings, and Christians specifically, might best please God. In so doing, Covel argued that disputes over ‘meer outward forms of Godliness’, such as the acts of fasting or praying, were only important insofar as they helped worshippers to develop what he termed ‘inward affection’. For Covel, ‘inward affection’, though difficult to define, was easy to spot. It was evidenced by ‘the unfeigned Exercise of a holy Life’, which entailed the performance of good works, combined with the pursuit of more abstract virtues such as sincerity, solemnity, patience, moderation, faith and conviction. In this paper, I explore how Covel, between his education at Cambridge in the 1650s, and the publication of his Account in the 1720s, came to conceptualize the worship of God in this way, with a particular focus on the impact of his travels around the Mediterranean in the 1670s and his exposure to the religious diversity of the Ottoman world. As part of this discussion, I show how Covel's observations abroad led him to question the sharp distinctions which were presumed to exist not only among Christians but also between Christians and members of other religions, most notably Islam. Taken as a whole, this paper will make a novel contribution to our understanding of early modern ecclesiastical debates in England, by examining their frequently transcultural frames of reference.","PeriodicalId":45351,"journal":{"name":"Renaissance Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-08-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85130675","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Advertising doubt in early modern Italy: Doubt and ignorance in early modern paratexts","authors":"M. Faini","doi":"10.1111/rest.12900","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/rest.12900","url":null,"abstract":"Spelled in several different ways, the word ‘doubt’, usually in the plural ‘doubts’ (dubbi, dubitazioni) appears on the frontispiece of several works printed in Venice and elsewhere in Italy in the sixteenth century. Building on different traditions, ranging from the pseudo‐Aristotelian Problemata to Medieval didactic literature, these texts, normally in the vernacular, address questions that the average reader may have on a variety of topics: from thermal baths to indulgences, from natural philosophy to duel. While usually the term ‘doubt’ means ‘question’, things can be sometimes less straightforward, especially when it comes to religious texts or works penned by unorthodox writers, as in the case of Ortensio Lando's Quattro libri di dubbi. This article will explore paratextual elements of works addressing doubts focusing on a variety of topics such as readership, definitions of doubt and its function, the role of these works in the dissemination of knowledge.","PeriodicalId":45351,"journal":{"name":"Renaissance Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-08-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77741683","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"‘Come parto imperfetto’: Paratexts and organization in a sixteenth‐century book of secrets","authors":"Ruben Celani","doi":"10.1111/rest.12898","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/rest.12898","url":null,"abstract":"This essay addresses the Secreti diversi etmiracolosi, one of the many books of secrets (collections of medical and craft recipes) crowding the sixteenth‐century Venetian book market. First published in 1563 and spuriously ascribed to the physician Gabriele Falloppia, this book underwent significant structural changes already in occasion of its second edition (1565). The editors of the first and second editions, Giovanni Antonio Di Maria and Borgaruccio Borgarucci, discussed their respective choices regarding the arrangement of the collection in their prefatory letters. This contribution examines the prefatory and organizational paratexts of both editions, which reveal a tension between the readability of the book and there liability of its contents. It will be argued that the different paratextual strategies sued by Di Maria and Borgarucci had profound impact on the contours of ‘Falloppia'’s literary identity, on the functions envisioned for the collection, and on the epistemological value of the recipes therein. The editorial history of the Secreti diversi also prompts broader considerations on the success of books of secrets, showing how this was not only a matter of content but also, and often more importantly, how that content was presented to the readers.","PeriodicalId":45351,"journal":{"name":"Renaissance Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-08-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87492001","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Citizenship and inheritance law in Florence: Round two of the conflict between and Borromei and Pazzi","authors":"Thomas Kuehn","doi":"10.1111/rest.12895","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/rest.12895","url":null,"abstract":"In 2020 Renaissance Studies [34 (2020): 243–59] published an essay entitled “Lorenzo de' Medici and Inheritance Law in Florence,” discussing the use of legislation by Lorenzo de' Medici to advantage Carlo Borromei in inheritance from his uncle, to the disadvantage of his cousin, Beatrice, who was married to a Pazzi. The legislation removed legal uncertainty in Florentine inheritance law. Another consilium for the Pazzi has emerged, arising in the aftermath of the legislation, taking an entirely different path to try to deny Carlo Borromei full access to the estate, on the grounds he was not a Florentine citizen and so unable to enjoy the benefits of Florence's new statute. The author of the consilium was a Sienese. His arguments shift the grounds of discussion, while not entirely escaping the whiff of sour grapes by the Pazzi at having lost in the first round. Citizenship emerges as a performative matter, described in terms of things like residence and tax paying. But it was also a matter at the discretion of other citizens. The renewed legal assault on the Borromei offers insight into the many meanings and dimensions of citizenship, as well as the resolve, soon to become fatal, of the Pazzi.","PeriodicalId":45351,"journal":{"name":"Renaissance Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-08-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83317627","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Advertising grammars and dictionaries in the Venetian printing market: A linguistic analysis of title pages","authors":"Eleonora Serra","doi":"10.1111/rest.12896","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/rest.12896","url":null,"abstract":"Title‐pages represent an interesting and under‐researched type of paratextual material in the context of the Italian early modern book market. Drawing on pragma‐linguistic approaches not yet applied in the Italian context, this paper offers an analysis of title‐pages of vernacular grammars and lexicographic works that were printed in Venice in the sixteenth and early seventeenth century (31 works).In Venice, which was the hub of vernacular codification, this new genre saw increasing attempts at popularization as more and more readers demanded straightforward tools that would help them learn literary Tuscan. My analysis focuses on the marketing strategies employed by publishers, printers, and authors – viewed together as a community of practice – on the title‐pages of these works. Focus is placed on the genre labels employed in primary titles, the presentation of the author's credentials, intended readership, printer and publisher, and dedication, as well as on the modifications applied by Venetian publishers when it came to re‐print and popularize non‐Venetian works. By exploring strategies used to guide and attract target audiences, this article aims to show that linguistic approaches are useful in the study of Italian paratexts and confirms the importance of including paratextual features in studies of historical sociolinguistics.","PeriodicalId":45351,"journal":{"name":"Renaissance Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-08-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75085088","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A question of genre: Philip Melanchthon's oratorical debut at Wittenberg University","authors":"Isabella Walser‐Bürgler","doi":"10.1111/rest.12894","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/rest.12894","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45351,"journal":{"name":"Renaissance Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-07-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75849059","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}