The Renaissance Battle for Rome

Competing Claims to an Idealized Past in Humanist Latin Poetry
Erscheinungsjahr 2024
ISBN: 978-0-19-887890-2
Verlag: Oxford University Press

Buch, Englisch, 278 Seiten, Print PDF, Format (B × H): 159 mm x 240 mm, Gewicht: 650 g

The Renaissance Battle for Rome examines the rhetorical battle fought simultaneously between a wide variety of parties (individuals, groups, authorities) seeking prestige or legitimacy through the legacy of ancient Rome—a battle over the question of whose claims to this legacy were most legitimate. Distinguishing four domains—power, morality, cityscape and literature—in which ancient Rome represented a particularly powerful example, this book traces the contours of this rhetorical battle across Renaissance Europe, based on a broad selection of Humanist Latin Poetry. It shows how humanist poets negotiated different claims on behalf of others and themselves in their work, acting both as "spin doctors" and "new Romans", while also undermining competing claims to this same idealized past. By so doing this book not only offers a new understanding of several aspects of the Renaissance that are usually considered separately, but ultimately allows us to understand Renaissance culture as a constant negotiation between appropriating and contesting the idea and ideal of "Rome."

Autoren/Hrsg.

De Beer, Susanna

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Kultur- und Ideengeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturgeschichte und Literaturkritik
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Alte Geschichte & Archäologie Geschichte der klassischen Antike
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtswissenschaft Allgemein
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Mentalitäts- und Sozialgeschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

- Acknowledgements

- Conventions

- Introduction: Forging Privileged Links to an Idealized Past

- 1: A New Golden Age. Rome Reclaims her Ancient Past

- 2: Competing Appropriations of Rome's Empire without End

- 3: Weaponized Images of Roman Virtue and Vice

- 4: The Symbolic Resonances of Rome's Cityscape

- 5: The Humanist Poets as "New Romans"

- Epilogue

- Appendix of Humanist Authors

- Bibliography

- Illustrations

- Index locorum

- General Index

Über Autor(innen)

Susanna de Beer studied Classics at Leiden University and holds a PhD from the University of Amsterdam. She is Senior Lecturer in (Renaissance) Latin Literature and Early Modern Studies at Leiden University, with a specialization in Classical Reception Studies, Renaissance Humanism, and Digital Humanities. She is currently on detachment as Director of Ancient Studies and Classical Receptions at the Royal Netherlands Institute (KNIR) in Rome. In 2009 she co-edited The Neo-Latin Epigram: A Learned and Witty Genre and in 2013 she published The Poetics of Patronage: Poetry as Self-Advancement in Giannantonio Campano.