CML videoseminar. Aglae Pizzone
CML videoseminar 13 December 2022 at 2:30 CET with Aglae Pizzone, "From Byzantium to Strasbourg: commenting on Hermogenes in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period". The talk will be in the CML common room (SDU) and online via Teams
Aglae Pizzone (University of Southern Denmark) will be giving an online seminar on "From Byzantium to Strasbourg: commenting on Hermogenes in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period", Tuesday 13 December.
The seminar is part of the autumn 2022 seminar series and will be online via Teams. All are welcome!
To register please write to cml@sdu.dk
Abstract
The present paper will present a first exploration of an underexplored chapter of European cultural History. The treatises ascribed to the Graeco-Roman rhetor Hermogenes of Tarsus, forming a handbook known as Corpus Hermogenianum, traveled back to Western Europe in the 15th century and became quickly a key text in defining Renaissance aesthetics. Hermogenes' theory of style has impacted on canonized authors ranging from Shakespeare to Torquato Tasso. Yet, the handbook had an equally profound impact also on the way learning was organized, especially in the new protestant academies, and it shaped new forms of civic discourse. This paper will offer an outline of the most pressing research questions in this area, focusing on the decades preceding and following the first Aldine printed edition (1508) of the corpus and showing the possible entanglements between the Western reception of Hermogenes and the late antique/Byzantine material present in the Hermogenian manuscripts circulating in Europe.