Catullus and His Renaissance Readers

by Julia Haig Gaisser

Overview

This is the first general study of the fortunes of Catullus in the Renaissance. After a brief introduction tracing the transmission of the poet from antiquity to the middle of the fifteenth century, the book follows his reception and interpretation by editors, commentators, university lecturers, and poets from the first edition (1472) through the sixteenth century. The focus is on Catullus but also on his Renaissance readers. Their text and interpretations not only influenced the ways in which later generations (including our own) would read the poet, but also provide windows into their own intellectual and historical worlds, which include Poliziano's Florence, Rome under the Medici Pope Leo X and his puritanical successor Adrian VI, the Paris of Ronsard and Marc-Antoine de Muret, post-Tridentine Rome, and sixteenth-century Leiden—as well as fifteenth-century Verona, where Catullus was an object of patriotic veneration, and Pontano's Naples, where poets learned to read and imitate him through Martial's imitations.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780198148821
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	04/08/1993
Pages:	460
Product dimensions:	8.98(w) x 5.80(h) x 1.35(d)

About the Author

Bryn Mawr College

Table of Contents

	Illustrations	x
	Abbreviations	xi
	Selective Chronology	xii
	Introduction: Fortuna Catulli	1
1.	Emendatio: From the Editio Princeps to the First Aldine	24
2.	Interpretatio: Making Sense of Catullus	66
3.	Praelectio: Pierio Valeriano at the University of Rome	109
4.	Commentarius: Mare-Antoine de Muret, Achilles Statius, and Joseph Scaliger	146
5.	Imitatio: Catullan Poetry from Martial to Johannes Secundus	193
6.	Parodia: Catullus and the Res Publica Litterarum	255
	Conclusion: The Renaissance Catullus	272
	Notes	275
	Appendices	401
	Bibliography	416
	Index Locorum	433
	General Index	439

Editorial Reviews

"Scholars of both the Renaissance and the ancient world will find this study rewarding and will benefit from the author's wide learning."—Choice

"If one measure of a good book is a concluding wish that it were even longer, then Julia Gaisser's study is a very fine book indeed. Its various virtues include a clear and graceful style, an absolutely lucid organization, thorough coverage of primary and secondary sources, and a topic both focused and full of broader implications. Reading Gaisser provides a solid introduction not only to the subject announced in her title but to a whole intellectual milieu; in her pages the world of Renaissance humanism comes to life....A study that might easily have been dry and pedantic instead moves briskly to a close that will seem (to many readers) to come too soon."—Sixteenth Century Journal

"This is an extremely well researched and well written book with much to offer readers interested in the role played by Classical authors in the development of Renaissance literature."—Religious Studies Review

"Gaisser has done a valuable service by navigating the fortuna of Catullus in the Renaissance and judiciously bringing to light the earliest influences that shaped the text we now possess....Any future study will have to use her work as a starting point."—The Classical Review

"Gaisser has produced a first-rate piece of scholarship which will remain the definitive treatment of its subject for many years to come."—Renaissance Quarterly

From the Publisher