Material Philology and the study of Renaissance Latin literature Neo-Latin Philology: Old Tradition, New Approaches explores the question whether the approaches developed in the so-called New or Material Philology can be applied to the study of Renaissance Latin literature. Two contributions in this volume focus on theoretical issues, the first presenting a critical assessment of the debate on New Philology in the 1990s, the second providing some guidelines for researchers of the materiality of sources. The remaining seven contributions discuss various ways in which the material presentation in either manuscript or print played a part in the interpretation of a variety of texts, including Basinio of Parma’s Hesperis, Niccolò Perotti's Cornu copiae, some poems by Janus Secundus, a commentary on Horace’s Ars poetica, Otto Venius’ Emblemata Horatiana, Johann Lauremberg's playPompejus Magnus, and the Alithinologia by John Lynch. Contributors Haijo Westra (University of Calgary), H. Wayne Storey (Indiana University, Bloomington), Christoph Pieper (Leiden University), Marianne Pade (Academy of Denmark, Rome), David Rijser (University of Amsterdam), Werner J.C.M. Gelderblom (Radboud University Nijmegen), Marc van der Poel (Radboud University Nijmegen), Tom Deneire (Antwerp University Library), Nienke Tjoelker (Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Neo-Latin Studies, Innsbruck)

From the dawn of the early modern period around 1400 until the eighteenth century, Latin was still the European language and its influence extended as far as Asia and the Americas. At the same time, the production of Latin writing exploded thanks to book printing and new literary and cultural dynamics. Latin also entered into a complex interplay with the rising vernacular languages. This Handbook gives an accessible survey of the main genres, contexts, and regions of Neo-Latin, as we have come to call Latin writing composed in the wake of Petrarch (1304-74). Its emphasis is on the period of Neo-Latin's greatest cultural relevance, from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries. Its chapters, written by specialists in the field, present individual methodologies and focuses while retaining an introductory character. The Handbook will be valuable to all readers wanting to orientate themselves in the immense ocean of Neo-Latin literature and culture. It will be particularly helpful for those working on early modern languages and literatures as well as to classicists working on the culture of ancient Rome, its early modern reception and the shifting characteristics of post-classical Latin language and literature. Political, social, cultural and intellectual historians will find much relevant material in the Handbook, and it will provide a rich range of material to scholars researching the history of their respective geographical areas of interest.

This volume offers a wide range of sample passages from literature written in Latin in the British Isles during the period from about 1500 to 1800. It includes a general introduction to and bibliography to the Latin literature of these centuries, as well as Latin texts with English translations, introductions and notes. These texts present a rich panorama of the different literary genres, styles and themes flourishing at the time, illustrating the role of Latin texts in the development of literary genres, the diversity of authors writing in Latin in early modern Britain, and the importance of Latin in contemporary political, religious and scientific debates. The collection, which includes both texts by well-known authors (such as John Milton, Thomas More and George Buchanan) and previously unpublished items, can be used as a point of entry for students at school and university level, but will also be of interest to specialists in a number of academic disciplines.

Stemmatology studies aspects of textual criticism that use genealogical methods to analyse a set of copies of a text whose autograph has been lost. This handbook is the first to cover the entire field, encompassing both theoretical and practical aspects of traditional as well as modern digital methods and their history. As an art (ars), stemmatology’s main goal is editing and thus presenting to the reader a historical text in the most satisfactory way. As a more abstract discipline (scientia), it is interested in the general principles of how texts change in the process of being copied. Thirty eight experts from all of the fields involved have joined forces to write this handbook, whose eight chapters cover material aspects of text traditions, the genesis and methods of traditional "Lachmannian" textual criticism and the objections raised against it, as well as modern digital methods used in the field. The two concluding chapters take a closer look at how this approach towards texts and textual criticism has developed in some disciplines of textual scholarship and compare methods used in other fields that deal with "descent with modification". The handbook thus serves as an introduction to this interdisciplinary field.

Presenting a range of Neo-Latin poems written by distinguished classical scholars across Europe from c. 1490 to c. 1900, this anthology includes a selection of celebrated names in the history of scholarship. Individual chapters present the Neo-Latin poems alongside new English translations (usually the first) and accompanying introductions and commentaries that annotate these verses for a modern readership, and contextualise them within the careers of their authors and the history of classical scholarship in the Renaissance and early modern period. An appealing feature of Renaissance and early modern Latinity is the composition of fine Neo-Latin poetry by major classical scholars, and the interface between this creative work and their scholarly research. In some cases, the two are actually combined in the same work. In others, the creative composition and scholarship accompany each other along parallel tracks, when scholars are moved to write their own verse in the style of the subjects of their academic endeavours. In still further cases, early modern scholars produced fine Latin verse as a result of the act of translation, as they attempted to render ancient Greek poetry in a fitting poetic form for their contemporary readers of Latin.

The Book of Revelation is a disorienting work, full of beasts, heavenly journeys, holy war, the End of the Age, and the New Jerusalem. It is difficult to follow the thread that ties the visions together and to makes sense of the work's message. In Manuscripts of the Book of Revelation, Garrick Allen argues that one way to understand the strange history of Revelation and its challenging texts is to go back to its manuscripts. The texts of the Greek manuscripts of Revelation are the foundation for the words that we encounter when we read Revelation in a modern Bible. But the manuscripts also tell us what other ancient, medieval, and early modern people thought about the work they copied and read. The paratexts of Revelation—the many features of the manuscripts that help readers to interpret the text—are one important point of evidence. Incorporating such diverse features like the traditional apparatus that accompanies ancient commentaries to the random marginal notes that identify the true identity of the beast, paratexts are founts of information on how other mostly anonymous people interpreted Revelation's problem texts. Allen argues that manuscripts are not just important for textual critics or antiquarians, but that they are important for scholars and serious students because they are the essential substance of what the New Testament is. This book illustrates ways that the manuscripts illuminate surprising answers to important critical questions. We can learn to 'read' the manuscripts even if we don't know the language.

Latin was for many centuries the common literary language of Europe, and Latin literature of immense range, stylistic power and social and political significance was produced throughout Europe and beyond from the time of Petrarch (c.1400) well into the eighteenth century. This is the first available work devoted specifically to the enormous wealth and variety of neo-Latin literature, and offers both essential background to the understanding of this material and sixteen chapters by leading scholars which are devoted to individual forms. Each contributor relates a wide range of fascinating but now little-known texts to the handful of more familiar Latin works of the period, such as Thomas More's Utopia, Milton's Latin poetry and the works of Petrarch and Erasmus. All Latin is translated throughout the volume.