Transformations of the Classics via Early Modern Commentaries: (29 Intersections)

Commentaries played an important role in the transmission of the classical heritage. Early modern intellectuals rarely read classical authors in a simple and “direct” form, but generally via intermediary paratexts, especially all kinds of commentaries. Commentaries presented the classical texts in certain ways that determined and guided the readers’ perception and usages of the texts being commented upon. Early modern commentaries shaped not only school and university education and professional scholarship, but also intellectual and cultural life in the broadest sense, including politics, religion, art, entertainment, health care, geographical discoveries etc., and even various professional activities and segments of life that were seemingly far removed from scholarship and learning, such as warfare and engineering.

Contributors include: Susanna de Beer, Valéry Berlincourt, Marijke Crab, Jeanine De Landtsheer, Karl Enenkel, Gergő Gellérfi, Trine Arlund Hass, Ekaterina Ilyushechkina, Ronny Kaiser, Marc Laureys, Christoph Pieper, Katharina Suter-Meyer, and Floris Verhaart.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements ......................................................................................... vii Notes on the Editor ......................................................................................... ix Notes on the Contributors ............................................................................ xi List of Illustrations ........................................................................................... xv Introduction – The Transformation of the Classics. Practices, Forms, and Functions of Early Modern Commenting .................... 1 . Karl A.E. Enenkel POETRY Horace and Ramist Dialectics: Pierre Gaultier Chabot’s (1516–1598?) Commentaries ..................................................................... 15 . Floris B. Verhaart Changing Metatexts and Changing Poetic Ideals .................................. 47 . Trine Arlund Hass Horaz als Schulfibel und als elitärer Gründungstext des deutschen Humanismus. Die illustrierte Horazausgabe des Jakob Locher (1498) .............................................................................................................. 61 . Christoph Pieper Petrus Nannius als Philologe und Literaturkritiker im Lichte seines Kommentars zur Ars Poetica des Horaz .............................................. 91 . Marc Laureys Scholarly Polemic: Bartolomeo Fonzio’s Forgotten Commentary on Juvenal ..................................................................................................... 111 . Gergő Gellérfi Commenting on Claudian’s ‘Political Poems’, 1612/1650 ...................... 125 . ValÉry Berlincourt HISTORY AND MORAL PHILOSOPHY Josse Bade’s Familiaris Commentarius on Valerius Maximus (1510): A School Commentary? ............................................................................ 153 . Marijke Crab Illustrations as Commentary and Readers’ Guidance. The Transformation of Cicero’s De Officiis into a German Emblem Book by Johann von Schwarzenberg, Heinrich Steiner, and Christian Egenolff (1517–1520; 1530/1531; 1550) ........................... 167 . Karl A.E. Enenkel Understanding National Antiquity. Transformations of Tacitus’s Germania in Beatus Rhenanus’s Commentariolus ............................ 261 . Ronny Kaiser Annotating Tacitus: The Case of Justus Lipsius ..................................... 279 . Jeanine De Landtsheer NATURAL HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY The Survival of Pliny in Padua. Transforming Classical Scholarship during the Botanical Renaissance ......................................................... 329 . Susanna de Beer Elephants and Bears through the Eyes of Scholars: A Case Study of Pliny’s Zoology in the 15th–16th Centuries .................................... 363 . Ekaterina Ilyushechkina Frühneuzeitliche Landesbeschreibung in einer antiken Geographie – Der Rhein aus persönlicher Perspektive in Vadians Kommentar zu Pomponius Mela (1522) .............................. 389 . Katharina Suter-Meyer Index Nominum ............................................................................................... 411

About the Author :
Karl Enenkel is Professor of Medieval Latin and Neo-Latin at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster (Germany). Previously he was Professor of Neo-Latin at the University of Leiden (Netherlands). He has published widely on international Humanism, early modern organisation of knowledge, literary genres 1300-1600, and emblem studies.


Review :
“The real tour de force in the volume is the ninety-four-page essay of its editor, Karl Enenkel, who also wrote the grant to the Dutch Organization for Scientific Research that supported five of the authors ... Enenkel argues (quite convincingly) that illustrations to early modern printed editions can also serve as a kind of commentary … We owe thanks to him for the vision and hard work that has produced what is considerably more on the scholarly level than just another set of conference papers, and to Brill for producing a well-printed volume that is enriched with dozens of illustrations (over forty in Enenkel’s article alone).”
Craig Kallendorf, Texas A&M University. In: Renaissance Quarterly, Vol. 67, No. 4 (Winter 2014), pp. 1303-1305.

“enormously helpful … beautifully presented, well-made … an excellent collection of thoughtful and stimulating essays.”
Jon Balserak, University of Bristol. In: Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 46, No. 2 (2015), pp. 430-431.