"The New Management of Knowledge in the Early Modern Period: The Transmission of Classical Latin Literature via Neo-Latin Commentaries" (Leitung: Prof. Dr. Karl Enenkel)

 

Zum Projekt

This programmatic research focuses on the transmission of classical Latin literature in the early modern period, via Neo-Latin commentaries. In the early modern period - ca. 1480-1700 - the whole of classical Latin literature was edited afresh in commentated form. For the new transmission of knowledge, the Neo-Latin commentary was of pivotal importance. Spot checks have led to the hypothesis that Neo-Latin commentaries offer an extremely complex exegesis that systematically unlocks the classical texts for diverse disciplines and practices of knowledge, such as medicine, geography, zoology, agriculture, hunting, horsemanship and so on. In this respect, the Neo-Latin commentary fundamentally differs from the modern practice in classical philology. The early modern commentators transformed the classical texts into multifunctional archives of knowledge which were considered the basis of almost all areas of scholarship and science. This programmatic research analyses the various strategies of commenting which were used in order to achieve this goal, and relates them to discourses of the knowledge areas the comments were directed to.

Projektleiter: Prof. Dr. Karl Enenkel

Mitarbeiter:

• Susanna de Beer
• Floris Verhaart