Ideas and opinions about communication and intellectual exchange underwent significant changes during the transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. The rediscovery of parrhesia by the humanists of the Quattrocento is one of the least studied of these changes, and at the same time, paradoxically, one of the most fascinating. My main argument in these pages is that the recovery of Hellenistic “freedom of speech” was a process that took place from the thirteenth century through the first decade of the sixteenth century; thus it began well before the term παρρησία was common currency among humanists. This is the most important and counterituitive aspect of the present analysis of early modern parrhesia, because it means that the concept did not develop at the expense of classical and biblical tradition so much as at the expense of late-medieval scholastic speculation about the sins of the tongue and the legitimation of anger as an intellectual emotion. To illustrate this longue durée process, I have focused on three stages: (i) the creation, transformation, and assimilation by fourteenth-century humanism of the systems of sins of the tongue, and especially the sin of contentio; (ii) the synthesis carried out by Lorenzo Valla between the scholastic tradition, the communicative presumptions of early humanism, and the classical and New Testament ideas of parrhesia; and (iii) the systematization and transformation of this synthesis in Raffaele Maffei's Commentariorum rerum urbanorum libri XXXVIII. In closing, I propose a hypothesis. The theoretical framework behind Maffei's encyclopaedic approach is not only that he was attempting to synthesize the Quattrocento's heritage through the prism of classical sources; it was also that he was crystallizing the communicative “rules of the game” that all of Christianitas implicitly accepted at the beginning of the sixteenth century. Taking the three ways of manifesting the truth considered by Maffei and fleshing them out in the figures of Erasmus of Rotterdam, Celio Calcagnini, and Martin Luther just before the emergence of the Protestant Reformation could help to explain from a communicative perspective the success and pan-European impact of the Reformation.
The discovery and subsequent edition of the only known sixteenth-century Spanish translation of The Praise of Folly (which should now be dated ca. 1532–1535) put into question the notion that Erasmus was almost exclusively received as a doctrinal author in sixteenth-century Spain. To bolster this argument, these pages examine the 1536 Spanish translation of Alberto Pio’s Tres et viginti libri locos lucubrationum variarum D. Erasmi Roterodami. Though this translation was not unknown to scholars, none realized that book IV, part 1 included a partial translation, paraphrase, and commentary of the Praise of Folly. Once recognized, this translation allows us more accurately to date the Moria de Erasmo and in turn demands an explanation of why Pio’s lengthy text was translated into Spanish. Moreover, this material helps to explain what texts the Spanish censors had in mind when referring to the “Moria of Erasmus in romance, Latin, and any other language.”
RESUMENEste artículo es una recopilación crítica de los principales trabajos que sobre el diálogo renacentista se han publicado entre 1898 y 2005 en lengua italiana, inglesa y francesa. Al tratarse de un arco temporal amplio, he intentado ofrecer al lector una narrativa coherente de las líneas que han orientado la investigación durante el siglo pasado, estableciendo puntos de contacto entre dominios lingüísticos y acercamientos críticos que no siempre son evidentes sin una revisión comprehensiva de la bibliografía. La razón para limitar la selección de las obras a tres dominios idiomáticos -con alguna breve incursión en el territorio alemán-viene definida por las capacidades comparativas del corpus y por el marco crítico que pueden ofrecer para la adscripción -crítica o no-de otros dominios lingüísticos a la narrativa que, creo, ofrecen. Queda para una mejor ocasión una recopilación de similares característi-cas en torno al diálogo renacentista español.Palabras clave: diálogo, Renacimiento, Italia, Francia, Inglaterra, literatura, literatura comparada, crítica literaria STUDIES ON RENAISSANCE DIALOGUE FROM AN EUROPEAN PERSPECTIVE (1898-005)ABTRACT This essay is a comprehensive review of the main critical works on Renaissance dialogue published in Italian, French and English between 1898 and 2005. Due to the temporal and linguistic extension of the topic, I have drawn -when possible-a narrative from the different critical developments, offering to the reader connections between separate linguistic domains and discrete critical approaches. These links are not always evident without an exhaustive scrutiny of the bibliography. The limiting of my selection to three languages -with a few references to the German realm-is motivated by the comparative possibilities and the critical 1 La primera versión de este trabajo fue redactada en 2005 gracias a una beca de Formación de Profesorado Universitario (M. E. C.), agradezco las observaciones que María José Vega, Emilio Blanco y Josep Solervicens hicieron en su momento al texto. Las revisiones, adiciones y cambios posteriores no podrían haber sido realizados sin el apoyo económico e institucional del Centre for Modern Thought (University of Aberdeen).
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
customersupport@researchsolutions.com
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.