Neo-Latin Philology: Old Tradition, New Approaches

Material Philology and the study of Renaissance Latin literature
Neo-Latin Philology: Old Tradition, New Approaches explores the question whether the approaches developed in the so-called New or Material Philology can be applied to the study of Renaissance Latin literature. Two contributions in this volume focus on theoretical issues, the first presenting a critical assessment of the debate on New Philology in the 1990s, the second providing some guidelines for researchers of the materiality of sources. The remaining seven contributions discuss various ways in which the material presentation in either manuscript or print played a part in the interpretation of a variety of texts, including Basinio of Parma’s Hesperis, Niccolò Perotti’s Cornu copiae, some poems by Janus Secundus, a commentary on Horace’s Ars poetica, Otto Venius’ Emblemata Horatiana, Johann Lauremberg’s play Pompejus Magnus, and the Alithinologia by John Lynch.

Contributors
Haijo Westra (University of Calgary), H. Wayne Storey (Indiana University, Bloomington), Christoph Pieper (Leiden University), Marianne Pade (Academy of Denmark, Rome), David Rijser (University of Amsterdam), Werner J.C.M. Gelderblom (Radboud University Nijmegen), Marc van der Poel (Radboud University Nijmegen), Tom Deneire (Antwerp University Library), Nienke Tjoelker (Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Neo-Latin Studies, Innsbruck)

CONSPECTUS RERUM
— Marc van der Poel, Introduction
— Haijo J. Westra, What’s in a Name: Old, New, and Material Philology, Textual Scholarship, and Ideology
— H. Wayne Storey, Method, History, and Theory in Material Philology
— Christoph Pieper, In Search of the Marginal Author. The Working Copy of Basinio of Parma’s Hesperis
— Marianne Pade, The Material Fortune of Niccolà² Perotti’s Cornu Copiae in the Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth Centuries
— David Rijser, The Tortuous Path from Anonymity to Authorship: ms bav Vat. Lat. 2742
— Werner J.C.M. Gelderblom, The Materiality of Revision: Manuscript, Print and Revisions in Johannes Secundus’
Poetry
— Marc van der Poel, Venius’ Emblemata Horatiana: Material Fragmentation of a Classical Poet
— Tom Deneire, Antiquarian Latin and the Materiality of Late Humanist Culture:the Case of Johann Lauremberg’s play
Pompejus Magnus (1610)
— Nienke Tjoelker, Reading and Writing in the Early Modern Period: New Philology and the Alithinologia (1664)
— Index nominum
— Notes on the contributors

Marc van der Poel

Marc van der Poel is Professor of Latin at Radboud University Nijmegen.

The authors of these essays agree that material presentation, in manuscript or print, contributes to interpretation, but they argue that the author comes to the fore more clearly in the Renaissance than in the Middle Ages and that the printing press allows for a more stable presentation of both author and text than the codex. In other words, they accept the focus on materiality from the new philology but not the French poststructuralist theory on which it was originally based. This position will not appeal to every reader of these essays, but everyone can, and should, use this collection as a way to think about how the material form in which a text is encountered affects its meaning.
Craig Kallendorf, THE NEO-LATIN NEWS Vol. 63, Nos. 1&2