Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- READING AND INTERPRETATION: AN EMERGING DISCOURSE OF POETICS
- POETICS
- THEORIES OF PROSE FICTION
- CONTEXTS OF CRITICISM: METROPOLITAN CULTURE AND SOCIO-LITERARY ENVIRONMENTS
- 33 Criticism and the metropolis: Tudor-Stuart London
- 34 Criticism in the city: Lyons and Paris
- 35 Culture, imperialism, and humanist criticism in the Italian city-states
- 36 German-speaking centres and institutions
- 37 Courts and patronage
- 38 Rooms of their own: Literary salons in seventeenth-century France
- 39 Renaissance printing and the book trade
- VOICES OF DISSENT
- STRUCTURES OF THOUGHT
- NEOCLASSICAL ISSUES: BEAUTY, JUDGEMENT, PERSUASION, POLEMICS
- A SURVEY OF NATIONAL DEVELOPMENTS
- Bibliography
- Index
- References
35 - Culture, imperialism, and humanist criticism in the Italian city-states
from CONTEXTS OF CRITICISM: METROPOLITAN CULTURE AND SOCIO-LITERARY ENVIRONMENTS
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2008
By
Edited by
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- READING AND INTERPRETATION: AN EMERGING DISCOURSE OF POETICS
- POETICS
- THEORIES OF PROSE FICTION
- CONTEXTS OF CRITICISM: METROPOLITAN CULTURE AND SOCIO-LITERARY ENVIRONMENTS
- 33 Criticism and the metropolis: Tudor-Stuart London
- 34 Criticism in the city: Lyons and Paris
- 35 Culture, imperialism, and humanist criticism in the Italian city-states
- 36 German-speaking centres and institutions
- 37 Courts and patronage
- 38 Rooms of their own: Literary salons in seventeenth-century France
- 39 Renaissance printing and the book trade
- VOICES OF DISSENT
- STRUCTURES OF THOUGHT
- NEOCLASSICAL ISSUES: BEAUTY, JUDGEMENT, PERSUASION, POLEMICS
- A SURVEY OF NATIONAL DEVELOPMENTS
- Bibliography
- Index
- References
Summary
The new criticism that emerged at the end of the fourteenth century in Italy had its roots in the movement to revive classical studies known as humanism. The humanists, however, sowed the seeds of an ambiguous legacy; they wrote critical essays on liberty, the ideal state, and the quest for the good, but they also produced propaganda for their states that ignored injustice at home and rationalized – in the name of peace and security – a policy of terror and aggression abroad. But this humanism – whatever its long-term force – could not have flourished either in its civic or more contemplative forms without the innovations of Petrarch. He was the first to couch modern concerns in the classical Latin of Cicero and Livy. Embracing civic, literary, philosophical, and religious themes, his writings include criticism in the form of letters, a Latin epic poem after Virgil's Aeneid, and lyric poetry in Italian.
There was a gulf nevertheless between the fifteenth-century humanists and Petrarch. They had access to a tradition Petrarch never knew: the Greek philosophers, orators, historians, tragedians, and poets. After the invention of the printing-press, the humanists of the later fifteenth century had at their disposal a variety and volume of classical and modern texts that would have amazed Petrarch: the new technology of movable type allowed more books to be produced in the last fifty years of the fifteenth century than all the scribes in Europe had written prior to that time.
Other features distinguish this first century of humanism from the periods before and after it: the dominance of Latin over the vernacular as the lingua franca of serious criticism; the enormous mobility of leading writers of the period, who moved typically between cities and courts; the related importance (for a mobile literary culture) of the epistolary genre as the essential medium of expression for the humanists; the rise of a number of distinct and different regional humanisms in the Italian city-states, each with its own local character; and lastly, yet most importantly, the disdain inherent in the ideology of Renaissance humanism for social justice.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism , pp. 355 - 363Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1999
References
, and (ed.), Princes, patronage, and the nobility: the court at the beginning of the modern age c. 1450–1650, London: German Historical Institute; Oxford and London: Oxford University Press, 1991.Google Scholar
, The commonwealth of wit: the writer's image and his strategies of self-representation in Elizabethan literature, Tübingen: G. Narr, 1984.Google Scholar
, ‘On wifely duties’, in The earthly republic: Italian humanists on government and society, trans. and ed. and , Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1978.Google Scholar
, The crisis of the early Italian Renaissance, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1955.Google Scholar
, The rhetoric of courtship in Elizabethan language and literature, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
‘Humanistische Bildungszentren’, in Deutsche Literatur, eine Sozialgeschichte, ed. and , vol. II, Von der Handschrift zum Buchdruck: Spätmittelalter, Reformation, Humanismus, Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1991.Google Scholar
, Politics and culture in Renaissance Naples, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, and , Sprachgesellschaften, Sozietäten, Dichtergruppen, Hamburg: E. Hauswedell, 1978.Google Scholar
, Teutsche Rede-bind- und Dicht-Kunst; 1679; reprint Hildesheim and New York: Olms, 1973.Google Scholar
, Literary patronage in the English Renaissance: the Pembroke family, London and New York: Routledge, 1988.Google Scholar
, ‘Panegyric to the city of Florence’, in The earthly republic: Italian humanists on government and society, trans. and ed. and , Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1978.Google Scholar
, Nouvelles observations sur la langue française, avec l'éloge des illustres savantes tant anciennes que modernes, Paris: J. Cusson, 1668.Google Scholar
, De la noblesse et ancieneté de la ville de Lyon, Paris: A l'enseigne Saint Nicolas, 1529.Google Scholar
, ‘Il ducato visconteo e la repubblica ambrosiana’, in Storia di Milano, ed. , 16 vols., Milan: Fondazione Treccani degli Alfieri, 1953–66, vol. VI.Google Scholar
, Society and culture in early modern France, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1975.Google Scholar
, Tender geographies: women and the origins of the novel in France, New York: Columbia University Press, 1991.Google Scholar
(ed.), The courts of Europe: politics, patronage and royalty 1400–1800, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1977.Google Scholar
, Essay of dramatick poesy, in The essays of John Dryden, ed. , Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1926, 2 vols.Google Scholar
[Goldschmied], De re poetica libri IIII, Antwerp: Plantin, 1565 [Expanded edition: De re poetica libri VII, Leipzig(?): Johann Steinman(?), 157?].Google Scholar
, Epistolarum familiarium libri XXXVII, Venice: Ioannes et Gregorius de Gregoriis, 1502.Google Scholar
, ‘La cultura milanese nella metà del XV secolo’, in Storia di Milano, ed. , 16 vols., Milan: Fondazione Treccani degli Alfieri, 1953–66, vol. VI.Google Scholar
, Grand commerce et vie urbaine au XVIe siècle, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1971.Google Scholar
[], Der Fruchtbringenden Gesellschaft geöffneter Erzschrein: Das Köthener Gesellschaftsbuch Fürst Ludwig I. von Anhalt-Köthen 1617–1650, ed. , Weinheim: VCH/Acta humaniora, 1985, 3 vols.Google Scholar
[], Die Briefe der Fruchtbringenden Gesellschaft und Beilagen: Die Zeit Fürst Ludwigs von Anhalt-Köthen, 1617–1650, ed. and , Die deutsche Akademie des 17. Jahrhunderts, Reihe I, Abt. A: Kritische Ausgabe der Briefe, Beilagen und Akademiearbeiten, Köthen, vol. I, Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1992.Google Scholar
[], Die ersten Gesellschaftsbücher der Fruchtbringen Gesellschaft (1622, 1624 und 1628), ed. , Die deutsche Akademie des 17. Jahrhunderts, Reihe II, Abt. A: Dokumente und Darstellungen, Köthen, vol. I, Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1992.Google Scholar
, Markets of bawdrie: the dramatic criticism of Stephen Gosson, ed. , Salzburg studies in English literature, 4 (1972).Google Scholar
, Versuch einer critischen Dichtkunst; 4th edn, 1751; reprint Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1962.Google Scholar
, Joseph Scaliger: a study in the history of classical scholarship, Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press, 1983.Google Scholar
, Renaissance literary criticism: a study of its social content, New York: Columbia University Press, 1945.Google Scholar
(ed.), English literary criticism: the Renascence, Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1963.Google Scholar
, and , Pegnesisches Schäfergedicht, in Die Pegnitz-Schäfer: Nürnberger Barockdichtung, ed. , Stuttgart: Reclam, 1968.Google Scholar
, Frauenzimmer Gesprächspiele, ed. , Deutsche Neudrucke: Reihe Barock 13, Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1968–9, 8 vols.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, Cartesian women: versions and subversions of rational discourse in the old regime, Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1992.Google Scholar
, Self-crowned laureates: Spenser, Jonson, and the literary system, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983.Google Scholar
, Poetry and courtliness in Renaissance England, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978.Google Scholar
, , and (ed.), Patronage, art and society in Renaissance Italy, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987.Google Scholar
‘Literarische Zentren – Sprachgesellschaften’, in Deutsche Literatur, eine Sozialgeschichte, ed. , vol. III, Zwischen Gegenreformation und Frühaufklärung: Späthumanismus, Barock 1572–1740, Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1985.Google Scholar
Venetian humanism in an age of patrician dominance, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985.Google Scholar
and , (ed.), Her immaculate hand: selected works by and about the women humanists of Quattrocento Italy, Binghamton: State University of New York Press, 1983.Google Scholar
, ‘Celtis und die Sodalitas litteraria per Germaniam’, in Respublica Guelpherbytana, Wolfenbütteler Beiträge zur Renaissance- und Barockforschung, ed. and , Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1987.Google Scholar
, Renaissance thought: the classic, scholastic, and humanist strains; 1955; reprint New York: Harper & Row, 1961.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, Les jeux d'esprit: promenade de la princesse de Conti à Eu (1701), ed. , Paris: Aubry, 1862.Google Scholar
, Le paradis des femmes: women, salons, and social stratification in seventeenth-century France, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976.Google Scholar
, and (ed.), Patronage in the Renaissance, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981.Google Scholar
, Woman triumphant: feminism in French literature, 1610–52, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977.Google Scholar
, Literature and culture in early modern London, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.Google Scholar
, Power and imagination: city-states in Renaissance Italy, New York: Vintage Books, 1979.Google Scholar
, Elizabethan courtier poets: the poems and their contexts, Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1991.Google Scholar
, Opera quae supersunt omnia, ed. , Brunswick and Halle (Saale): C. A. Schwetschke, 1834–60, 28 vols.Google Scholar
, George of Trebizond: a biography and a study of his rhetoric and logic, Leiden: Brill, 1976.Google Scholar
The reader's eye: studies in didactic literary theory from Dante to Tasso, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979.Google Scholar
, Unterricht von der Teutschen Sprache und Poesie; 1682; reprint Bad Homburg: Gehlen, 1969, ed. .Google Scholar
Ramus, method, and the decay of dialogue: from the art of discourse to the art of reason; 1958; reprint New York: Octagon, 1974.Google Scholar
, Censorship and interpretation: the conditions of reading and writing in early modern England, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984.Google Scholar
, Court patronage and corruption in early Stuart England, Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1990.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, Rerum familarium libri I–VIII, trans. , Albany: State University of New York Press, 1975.Google Scholar
, Les salons littéraires et la société française, 1610–1789, New York: Brentano's, 1943.Google Scholar
, Angeli Politiani opera; 1553; facs. reprint Turin: Bottega d'Erasmo, 1971, ed. , 3 vols.Google Scholar
(?), The arte of English poesie (1589), ed. and , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1936.Google Scholar
Laura Cereta: Quattrocento humanist, Binghamton: State University of New York Press, 1981.Google Scholar
(ed.) Renaissance humanism: foundations, forms, and legacy, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988, 3 vols.Google Scholar
, Filelfo in Milan: writings, 1451–1477, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, ‘Lyons and cosmopolitanism at the beginning of the French Renaissance’, in French humanism, 1470–1600, ed. , London: Macmillan, 1969.Google Scholar
‘The social situation of seventeenth-century poetry’, in Metaphysical poetry, ed. , Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1970.Google Scholar
‘The stigma of print: a note on the social bases of Tudor poetry’, Essays in criticism 1 (1951).Google Scholar
(ed.), Kürbishütte und Königsberg: Modellversuch einer sozialgeschichtlichen Entzifferung poetischer Texte, Munich: Beck, 1975.Google Scholar
(ed.), Stadt – Schule – Universität – Buchwesen und die deutsche Literatur im 17. Jahrhundert, Munich: Beck, 1976.Google Scholar
, Court culture and the origins of a royalist tradition in early Stuart England, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
[Iacobus Pontanus], Poeticarum institutionum libri III, Ingolstadt: A. Sartorius, 1594.Google Scholar
(ed.), Critical essays of the seventeenth century, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1908–9, 3 vols. [Reprint Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1957].Google Scholar
, Der Studirenden Jugend Discours welcher Gestalt man denen Frantzosen in gemeinem Leben und Wandel nachahmen solle?, in Deutsche Schriften, ed. , Stuttgart: Reclam, 1970.Google Scholar
, De poetica et carminis ratione liber, trans. and ed. , Munich: W. Fink, 1973, 3 vols.Google Scholar
Lyons 1473–1503: the beginnings of cosmopolitanism, Cambridge, MA: Mediaeval Academy of America, 1962.Google Scholar
, Ambition and privilege: the social tropes of Elizabethan courtesy theory, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984.Google Scholar
From Byzantium to Italy: Greek studies in the Italian Renaissance, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992.Google Scholar
Hercules at the crossroads: the life, works, and thought of Coluccio Salutati, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1983.Google Scholar
, Deutscher Helicon, in Sämtliche Werke, ed. , vol. IX, Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1971.Google Scholar