Every third year, the members of the International Association for Neo-Latin Studies (IANLS) assemble for a week-long conference. Over the years, this event has evolved into the largest single conference in the field of Neo-Latin studies. The papers presented at these conferences offer, then, a general overview of the current status of Neo-Latin research; its current trends, popular topics, and methodologies. In 2022, the members of IANLS gathered for a conference in Leuven where 50 years ago the first of these congresses took place.This volume presents the conference’s papers which were submitted after the event and which have undergone a peer-review process. The papers deal with a broad range of fields, including literature, history, philology, and religious studies.

TheHistory of Linguistics, to be published in five volumes, aims to provide the reader with an authoritative and comprehensive account of the attitudes to language prevailing in different civilizations and in different periods by examining the very varied development of linguistic thought in the specific social, cultural and religious contexts involved. Issues discussed include the place of language in education, variation and prestige, and approaches to lexical and grammatical description. The authors of the individual chapters are specialists who have analysed the primary sources and produced original syntheses by exploring the linguistic interests and assumptions of particular cultures in their own terms, without seeking to reinterpret them as contributions towards the development of contemporary western conceptions of linguistic science. The third volume of the History of Linguistics covers the Renaissance and the Early Modern Period. The chapter on the Renaissance (15th and 16th centuries), examines the study of Latin in both the new Humanist and rationalist traditions, along with the foundations of vernacular grammar in the study of Romance, Germanic and Slavic. The chapter on the Early Modern Period (17th and 18th centuries) presents the study of language in its philosophical context (Bacon, Port-Royal, Hobbes, Locke, Leibniz, the Enlightenment), as well as the accumulation of data which led to the foundation of Comparative Philology in the 19th century.

From ca. 1300 a new genre developed in European literature, Neo-Latin drama. Building on medieval drama, vernacular theatre and classical drama, it spread around Europe. It was often used as a means to educate young boys in Latin, in acting and in moral issues. Comedies, tragedies and mixed forms were written. The Societas Jesu employed Latin drama in their education and public relations on a large scale. They had borrowed the concept of this drama from the humanist and Protestant gymnasia, and perfected it to a multi media show. However, the genre does not receive the attention that it deserves. In this volume, a historical overview of this genre is given, as well as analyses of separate plays. Contributors include: Jan Bloemendal, Jean-Frédéric Chevalier, Cora Dietl, Mathieu Ferrand, Howard Norland, Joaquín Pascual Barea, Fidel Rädle, and Raija Sarasti Willenius.

The emblem and the device (or impresa as it was called in Italy) were the most direct and telling manifestations of a mentality that played a significant role in the discourse and art in Western Europe between the late Middle Ages and the mid-eighteenth century. In the history of Western symbolism, the emblematic sign forms a bridge between late medieval allegory and the Romantic metaphor. These intricate combinations of picture and text, where the picture completes the ellipses of an epigrammatic text, and where the text fixes the intention of the pictured signs, provide useful clues to the way pictures in general were read and textual descriptions visualized in early modern Europe. Daniel Russell demonstrates how the emblematic forms emerged from the way illustrations were used in late medieval French manuscript culture, how the forms were later disseminated in France, and how they functioned within early modern French culture and society. He also attempts to show how the guiding principles behind the composition of emblems influenced the production of courtly decoration, ceremony, and propaganda, as well as the composition of literary texts as different as Maurice Sc¦ve's Delie, Montaigne's Essais, and Du Bartas's Sepmaine.

"Latin: A Symbol's Empire is a work of reference and a piece of cultural history: the story of a language that became a symbol with its own, highly significant empire."--BOOK JACKET.

This study reexamines the invention of the emblem book and discusses the novel textual and pictorial means that applied to the task of transmitting knowledge. It offers a fresh analysis of Alciato’s Emblematum liber, focusing on his poetics of the emblem, and on how he actually construed emblems. It demonstrates that the “father of emblematics” had vernacular forebears, most importantly Johann von Schwarzenberg who composed two illustrated emblem books between 1510 and 1520. The study sheds light on the early development of the Latin emblem book 1531–1610, with special emphasis on the invention of the emblematic commentary, on natural history, and on advanced methods of conveying emblematic knowledge, from Junius to Vaenius.