Comments on: 2.17 Desiderius Erasmus, Ad Man

By: Paul F. Gehl

Paul F. Gehl — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 10:43:20 +0000

You put your finger on the exact point of my “ad man” metaphor, Jane, and its limitations too. Although advertising strategies are clear in the rhetoric of this and many other Erasmian prefaces, it is not always entirely clear whom he was addressing. Certainly he wrote to and for his own circle of humanist friends, but that was preaching to the choir. Effective advertising must also reach a wider audience of book buyers. In this case we have mostly the success of the edition itself (and its frequent reprinting with this exact same preface) as evidence for the wider audience of the advert.

By: Jane Wickersham

Jane Wickersham — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 23:34:54 +0000

As insufferably elitist as Erasmus could be, did he not have the skills to back it up? Most humanists probably were not quite up to his standard of textual criticism (if I understand Jardine and Rummel correctly). But, as Paul points out, that did put Erasmus in an inherently ironic, and somewhat hilarious, position; selling his skills to those who he might not have considered worthy of them in order to make a living.

By: Ken Gouwens

Ken Gouwens — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 12:04:02 +0000

p.s. — above should of course read “tussis,” not “tussus”; sorry for the typo.

By: Ken Gouwens

Ken Gouwens — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 17:40:28 +0000

If “Adagia” as defined usually do not have much of a moral component (as one sees in, e.g., Erasmus’s blushing gloss of “Tussus pro crepitu,” Adagia I vi 63), it may be worth emphasizing that addenda to successive editions of the collection often included moralizing that could be quite heavy-handed.
A fine essay (not mentioned in the bibliography, so far as I can see) that bears directly upon the thinking about ethics that could be inspired by reading the “Adagia” is: Peter Mack, “Rhetoric, ethics and reading in the Renaissance,” _Renaissance Studies_ 19 (2005): 1–21. See esp. pp. 9–11.

By: Paul F. Gehl

Paul F. Gehl — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 21:45:22 +0000

No question about it, Erasmus was writing for the ages!

By: ChristinaL

ChristinaL — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 17:46:49 +0000

“…it will be a useful moral reference life-long, both because it will be memorized in part and again because it would become a pocket book for future consultation.”

Would writers of this time have written for their contemporaries only, or would they have expected their work to be consulted by many future generations as well?

By: Paul F. Gehl

Paul F. Gehl — Thu, 14 May 2009 15:33:01 +0000

Thanks for these many, useful clarifications!

By: Dan Sheerin

Dan Sheerin — Sat, 09 May 2009 00:31:55 +0000

sententiam saepenumero non assequitur] assequitur should be translated “attain to,” “grasp,” or “get”

more idiotic] better “more wanting in eloquence than speechlessness itself”

rhetoricatur] perhaps “plays the rhetor”; the reference here is surely to Robertus de Evremond who indicates in his dedicatory letter that it is in part a response to a request for instruction in rhetoric.

more idiotic] perhaps something like “less articulate than inarticulateness itself”

philosophizes ineptly] “quite ineptly” or “quite inapproriately”; this is more likely a reference to the anonymous commentary “Summi deus largitor praemii” than to Philippus de Bergamo’s Speculum regiminis. The anonymus begins with an invocation of protreptic to wisdom and philosophy and soon discusses the in terms of their causa materialis, causa finalis, causa efficiens, and causa formalis; the commentary of Philippus de Bergamo, his Speculum Regiminis, begins, after a dedicatory epistle, with an elaborate inventorium.

By: Dan Sheerin

Dan Sheerin — Sat, 09 May 2009 00:31:36 +0000

commenting proverbs] insert on; one can, I think, make a distinction between adagia and proverbs, adagia being, as indicated, “sayings” or “vivid expressions” which may have a moral component, but usually do not (e.g., ouden pros epos [Erasmus, Adagia I v 45: Nihil ad versum] quoted in his dedicatory letter to his ed. of the Disticha, n107), whereas proverbs of the type in Disticha Catonis usually convey an injunction or some advice about good behavior.

By: Dan Sheerin

Dan Sheerin — Sat, 09 May 2009 00:31:18 +0000

see also Erasmo de Rotterdam, Los Dísticos de Catón comentados: Edición, traducción y notas by Antonio Garcia Masegosa (Vigo: Universidade de Vigo, Servicio de Publicacións, 1997).