Portraying the Prince in the Renaissance: The Humanist Depiction of Rulers in Historiographical and Biographical Texts

Front Cover
Patrick Baker, Ronny Kaiser, Maike Priesterjahn, Johannes Helmrath
Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG, Jun 20, 2016 - Literary Criticism - 500 pages

The portrayal of princes plays a central role in the historical literature of the European Renaissance. The sixteen contributions collected in this volume examine such portrayals in a broad variety of historiographical, biographical, and poetic texts. It emerges clearly that historical portrayals were not essentially bound by generic constraints but instead took the form of res gestae or historiae, discrete or collective biographies, panegyric, mirrors for princes, epic poetry, orations, even commonplace books – whatever the occasion called for. Beyond questions of genre, the chapters focus on narrative strategies and the transformation of ancient, medieval, and contemporary authors, as well as on the influence of political, cultural, intellectual, and social contexts. Four broad thematic foci inform the structure of this book: the virtues ascribed to the prince, the cultural and political pretensions inscribed in literary portraits, the historical and literary models on which these portraits were based, and the method that underlay them. The volume is rounded out by a critical summary that considers the portrayal of princes in humanist historiogrpahy from the point of view of transformation theory.

 

Contents

Introduction
FLORIAN SCHAFFENRATH
THOMAS SCHWITTER
MAIKE PRIESTERJAHN
STEFAN SCHLELEIN
HESTER SCHADEE
LUKA ŠPOLJARIĆ
RONNY KAISER Personelle Serialität und nationale Geschichte Überlegungen zu d
WOLFGANG STROBL
n RenaissanceHumanismus
MARC LAUREYS
PATRICK BAKER
KIRA VON OSTENFELDSUSKE
JEROEN DE KEYSER
Verbis phucare tyrannos? Selbstanspruch und Leistungsspektren
ALBERT SCHIRRMEISTER

Wie ein Herrscher zum
MARKUS SCHÜRER
GARY IANZITI
THOMAS HAYE
Indices
List of Contributors
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

About the author (2016)

P. Baker, R. Kaiser, M. Priesterjahn, und J. Helmrath, Humbodt-Universität zu Berlin, Deutschland.

Bibliographic information