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Tragedy at Wittenberg: Sophocles in Reformation Europe
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 March 2020
Abstract
Amid the devastation of the Schmalkaldic War (1546–47), Philip Melanchthon and his colleagues at Wittenberg hastily compiled a Latin edition of Sophocles from fifteen years of teaching materials and sent it to Edward VI of England within weeks of his coronation. Wittenberg tragedy reconciled Aristotelian technology, Reformation politics, and Lutheran theology, offering consolation in the face of events that themselves seemed to be unfolding on a tragic stage. A crucial but neglected source of English and Continental literary thought, the Wittenberg Sophocles shaped the reception of Greek tragedy, tragic poetics, and Neo-Latin and vernacular composition throughout the sixteenth century.
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- Copyright © The Author(s) 2020. Published by the Renaissance Society of America
Footnotes
All translations are my own unless otherwise indicated. For ease of reference, editions of Greek dramatists are cited by the name of their editor/translator/commentator. MBW refers to the letter number in Melanchthon, 1977–. I am grateful to Aaron Kachuck, Russ Leo, Peter Sherlock, Carla Suthren, Giles Waller, the members of the Early Modern Club at Trinity College, and, above all, Nathaniel Hess, as well as to audiences at Cambridge, King's College London, Chicago, the Folger Shakespeare Library, and the RSA, for wisdom and rebuke, tum ad commonefactionem tum ad consolationem.
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