n Comments on: 4.04 Ciceronianisms http://www.humanismforsale.org/text/archives/250 Making and Marketing Schoolbooks in Italy, 1450-1650 Sun, 25 Dec 2011 13:41:49 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Paul Gehl http://www.humanismforsale.org/text/archives/250/comment-page-1#comment-354 Paul Gehl Sat, 24 Sep 2011 01:32:51 +0000 http://www.humanismforsale.org/text/?p=250#comment-354 Kristeller's 1974 essays and Rummel's study, cited in the notes, are still the best treatments I know on this subject. It's not one that I can claim to have done original research on. Rereading my own prose at this point, I can see that I may seem to have intended to suggest a direct, derivative relationship of genre between humanist invective and scholastic disputation. I really meant to say instead that the habit of antagonism typical of scholastic debate was still so much a part of scholarly life in the early Renaissance that it fed naturally into humanist forms. When dealing as I do in this book with the prefaces and other paratexts of published textbooks, it is striking how frequently authors refer to polemical attacks -- often ones that do not survive or cannot easily be found in the record-- that were violent and personal enough to merit replies in print. In the case of famous figures like Erasmus, we have a record of a great deal of the back and forth. For textbook authors (like Mancinelli to whom I refer here) we will probably never know who or how influential his critics were. We know only that he felt it necessary to take them on in second and subsequent editions of his textbooks, in letters that became a permanent part of these textbooks as they were printed and reprinted for fifty years and more. Kristeller’s 1974 essays and Rummel’s study, cited in the notes, are still the best treatments I know on this subject. It’s not one that I can claim to have done original research on. Rereading my own prose at this point, I can see that I may seem to have intended to suggest a direct, derivative relationship of genre between humanist invective and scholastic disputation. I really meant to say instead that the habit of antagonism typical of scholastic debate was still so much a part of scholarly life in the early Renaissance that it fed naturally into humanist forms. When dealing as I do in this book with the prefaces and other paratexts of published textbooks, it is striking how frequently authors refer to polemical attacks — often ones that do not survive or cannot easily be found in the record– that were violent and personal enough to merit replies in print. In the case of famous figures like Erasmus, we have a record of a great deal of the back and forth. For textbook authors (like Mancinelli to whom I refer here) we will probably never know who or how influential his critics were. We know only that he felt it necessary to take them on in second and subsequent editions of his textbooks, in letters that became a permanent part of these textbooks as they were printed and reprinted for fifty years and more.

]]> By: Janice Gunther http://www.humanismforsale.org/text/archives/250/comment-page-1#comment-353 Janice Gunther Fri, 23 Sep 2011 21:00:44 +0000 http://www.humanismforsale.org/text/?p=250#comment-353 I am interested in your statement "One thing humanists all over Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth century shared was a pugnacious willingness to argue that derived from scholastic models. Petrarch made many innovations in humanist thought, among them introducing a sustained polemic against the scholastics. In so doing he also imported into humanism the quarrelsomeness of the universities, where disputation pro and contra was a permanent fixture." I had not before connected scholastic disputation with the development of humanist dialogues and invective, and you note that the latter was based on classical models. Could you provide more detail about how you see the relationship between scholastic disputation and the development of humanist dialogue and invective? I am interested in your statement “One thing humanists all over Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth century shared was a pugnacious willingness to argue that derived from scholastic models. Petrarch made many innovations in humanist thought, among them introducing a sustained polemic against the scholastics. In so doing he also imported into humanism the quarrelsomeness of the universities, where disputation pro and contra was a permanent fixture.” I had not before connected scholastic disputation with the development of humanist dialogues and invective, and you note that the latter was based on classical models. Could you provide more detail about how you see the relationship between scholastic disputation and the development of humanist dialogue and invective?

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