Topical Matters In Dedicatory Letters Of Latin Plays In The Early Modern Netherlands

Bloemendal, Jan

doi:10.1163/ej.9789004185739.i-540.41

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“…Most famously Gessner addressed each of the nineteen books of his Pandectae (1548) to one or two printers, but a further fifteen of his works also contained two or more dedications. 19 Gessner did not set a new precedent in doing so--Erasmus had written seven dedications for different parts of his edition of Lucian for example--but Gessner's habit of bringing together in one book multiple related texts lent 18 For an entry into the literature on dedications see Schottenloher 1953, Gilmont and Vanautgaerden 2003, Bloemendal 2011 itself especially well to this practice. 20 In some cases the different parts were all authored by Gessner, as in his De piscibus (1556) and…”

Section: Thanking and Eliciting Contributionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Conrad Gessner’s Paratexts

Blair¹

2016

Gesnerus

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Throughout his prolific publishing career Conrad Gessner composed abundant paratexts which offer valuable insight into his methods of working. Gessner wrote many dedications, only a minority of which were addressed to major patrons of his day. Instead he used them to thank dozens of physicians and scholars for sending him information, images, and manuscripts for his ongoing projects. Gessner acknowledged new arrivals in successive publications and invited further contributions explicitly. In "to the readers" and other passages Gessner called attention to his future publication plans and his skill in working with printers and in editing manuscripts of recently deceased scholars, thereby also encouraging new commissions. Gessner was also a master indexer and innovated especially in drawing up the first index of authors cited for his edition of Stobaeus in 1543 and a new all-purpose index in his Stobaeus of 1559. Many other aspects of Gessner's paratexts warrant further study. Conrad Gessner's Paratexts 1 The paratexts of Conrad Gessner's many publications form a rich corpus in which to watch Gessner at work and reflecting on his work. Gessner used all the forms of paratext commonly found in scholarly works in this period-dedications, "to the readers," tables of contents, lists of authorities cited, commendatory poems, alphabetical indexes, and lists of errata-and more rarefied features generally limited to classical editions, such as lists of emendations (or castigationes), and excerpts about the author from other authorities. These paratexts served various predictable purposes such as thanking and appealing to patrons and contributors, expressing apologies and modesty, highlighting the dignity of the topic and the authority of the work, and aiding the reader with 1 Warm thanks to Anthony Grafton, Urs Leu, and Hubert Steinke for their very helpful feedback on a draft, to Hubert Steinke for his patient editorial support, and to Urs Leu and Sandra Weidmann for consultations concerning E-rara. explanations, corrections, and finding devices. But Gessner's paratexts also contain many surprises: he volunteered unusual detail about his methods of working, the circumstances of publication, and his relations with correspondents and printers; he published so frequently that he carried on a kind of one-sided conversation with his readers, inviting contributions to his ongoing projects and commenting on other publications past and future; and he experimented with new forms, though some of them remained one-offs, e.g. adding page numbers to the index of authors cited or introducing a prayer or devotional passage. Paratexts are especially visible and rhetorically self-conscious passages which can reward careful study despite their formulaic features. 2 Gessner's generated new twists on common tropes of authorial modesty and gratitude, and historians can glean from his paratexts valuable information about his contacts and working methods, with the caveat that the hopes articulated at the moment of publication were not always born...

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Section: Thanking and Eliciting Contributionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Conrad Gessner’s Paratexts

Blair¹

2016

Gesnerus

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The 2016 Josephine Waters Bennett Lecture: Humanism and Printing in the Work of Conrad Gessner

Blair

2017

Renaiss. Q.

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I discuss how printing affected the practice of scholarship by examining the working methods of Conrad Gessner (1516–65), a prolific humanist, bibliographer, and natural historian. Gessner supplemented his revenue as city physician in Zurich through his publishing activities. He hailed printing, along with libraries to preserve the books, as crucial to the successful transmission of learning to the distant future. Gessner also used printing as a kind of social media: to reach readers rapidly all over Europe, in order to solicit contributions to his research projects underway, to advertise forthcoming books, and to develop his own thinking through multiple iterations.

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Topical Matters In Dedicatory Letters Of Latin Plays In The Early Modern Netherlands

Cited by 2 publications

References 0 publications

Conrad Gessner’s Paratexts

Conrad Gessner’s Paratexts

The 2016 Josephine Waters Bennett Lecture: Humanism and Printing in the Work of Conrad Gessner

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