Writing and Reading Letters in the Global Renaissance

Antike und Abendland 68 (2022): 37-58, 2022

The essay explores how Renaissance humanists, in particular Francesco Petrarch and Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini, developed the use of 'humanitas' -- understood as both culture and care -- in their letter collections. As a form of narrative medicine, letters created a highly intersubjective dialogue that demonstrated the role of learning in the concern for friends.

(Re)Interpretacje (nie)literackie, ed. Katarzyna Kozak, Agnieszka Rzepkowska, Roman Mnich, Siedlce : Instytut Kultury Regionalnej i Badań Literackich im. Franciszka Karpińskiego. Stowarzyszenie : Instytut Neofilologii i Badań Interdyscyplinarnych. Uniwersytet Przyrodniczo-Humanistyczny w Siedlcach,, 2016

The research that has been conducted for many years in the field of epistolography enabled to distinguish and systematize a letter as a literary form, not only in terms of the topics of letters, but also their characteristic features, depending upon the epoch they were written in. In the history of a letter the correspondence from the Renaissance occupies a special place. The authors of a Renaissance letter managed to remove the previously used official titulary, but the humble tone of the author towards the addressee was retained, and epithets deeply imbued with ornaments started to dominate over time in the introductory and final parts of the letter. A characteristic feature of these letters was that they not only served their intended purpose – to communicate information, but to a great extent became a form of literary creation. They started to play a role of a scientific, philosophical and moral or aesthetic form of expression. The characteristic features and language used in Rennaisance letter will be presented on the example of Polish –English correspondence from 16th century.

La poésie palinodique, 299-302, the illustration shows the prince of the Puy of Rouen on a seat at the centre of the stage during a contest. This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The reach of the republic of letters : literary and learned societies in late medieval and early modern Europe / edited by Arjan van Dixhoorn, Susie Speakman Sutch. p. cm.-(Brill's studies in intellectual history ; v. 168) Papers presented at two workshops held in Rome in 2003 and 2006. Includes bibliographical references and index.

This article provides an introduction to the history of the familiar letter along with a case study of Johannes Sambucus’s correspondence. It compares the Latin to the vernacular familiar letter in the sixteenth century, stressing their parallel development and mutual influence and the difficulties of achieving the level of privacy, naturalness, spontaneity and directness that was typically expected of a “conversation halved”, i.e. the familiar letter. Although in theory the use of the vernacular enabled the letter writer to be more playful and spontaneous, in reality, learned correspondence remained self-reflective and the feel of spontaneity had to be reinvented both in Latin and the vernacular. The great advantage of Latin over vernacular letters – and this is the main thesis of this article – was their increased potential for networking, especially when it came to connecting men of different social standing on the basis of collegiality and in the name of meritocratic values. As his correspondence makes abundantly clear, Sambucus was a master at addressing social or intellectual superiors within these terms. His letters created and maintained an ethos of equality – founded on shared culture and learned interests – which was the fundamental fuel that kept the Republic of Letters alive.

"the humanist might write as if he were engaged in a private conversation, but that conversation was often intentionally, or at least potentially, a public discussion […] or a form of political lobbying […]. Then he might compile or revise a selection of letters written for many different purposes, both those he had sent and those he had received from others, and even write a few letters he had no intention of sending, to create in effect an autobiography"

Paula Findlen and Suzanne Sutherland, eds., The Renaissance of Letters: Knowledge and Community in Italy, 1300-1650 (London and New York), pp. 293-317., 2020

Scholars trying to make sense of early modern letters of news – a growing genre in the sixteenth and seventeenth century – need to take seriously the ways in which letter-writers and recipients themselves made sense of the news at the time: the reasons why and the ways in which they selected, understood, presented or mis-represented information. Did they try to turn huge masses of detailed, ephemeral, specific reports into more enduring teachings and ideas? This article suggests a difference between personal letters of (public) news and professional newsletters, and it studies the case of Venetian friar Fulgenzio Micanzio’s letters to William Cavendish, second earl of Devonshire. Written over the period 1615-28, Micanzio’s letters were translated into English for circulation by Thomas Hobbes. Micanzio had extremely broad information covering much of Europe and ranging from the Ottoman Empire and the Middle East to Iberia, but he offered not just news but above all commentary. He elaborated on the events to highlight connections among distant war fronts and countries. He read news in light of classical knowledge and used ancient history to draw conclusions about present-day affairs. He sought to uncover the hidden intentions of actors behind the appearance of their actions. In turn, readers saw his comments as particularly valuable, as we know from marginal annotations, added notes, and possible borrowings from his letters. In particular, the correspondence was known to Francis Bacon and may have informed some of his thinking on European politics and religion at the time of the Thirty Years War. https://www.routledge.com/The-Renaissance-of-Letters-Knowledge-and-Community-in-Italy-1300-1650/Findlen-Sutherland/p/book/9781138367500

Translating Early Modern Science, 2017

The conference at the Warburg Institute would not have been possible without the support of its then director, Peter Mack, nor the support and help of Joanna Woodall in helping us organize, and the support (and keynote address) from Sven Dupré, as well as Guido Giglioni and Eric Jorink. We would like to thank Sven Dupré and Elaine Leong for inviting us to speak in their panels in Lisbon, and Monica Azzolini (RSA representative for the History of Science) and Dario Tessicini (University of Durham) for supporting our panels at the RSA meeting in Berlin. To organize our conference in London we received generous funding from the Warburg Institute, the Society for Renaissance Studies, the Institute of Medieval and Early Modern Studies and Department of English at the University of Durham, and the Royal Historical Society. We thank all institutions and societies for their support. During the editing of the volume we have had all kinds of help from Florence Hsia, Elaine Leong, and Sachiko Kusukawa-for which our grateful thanks.

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