Trends in Classics – Scholarship in the Making
-
Edited by:
In his justly famous History of Classical Scholarship, Rudolf Pfeiffer writes that "the history of classical scholarship is classical scholarship in the making." Classical scholarship has represented one of the main interests of study and research since Humanism throughout the world of Western culture, from Europe to the Americas, and still represents a large and varied field of research, to which many scholars are dedicated. Linked to political, social, philosophical and religious aspects of human thought, classical scholarship has indelibly and essentially marked the cultural landscape of the modern world and continues today to be a field of study of primary importance.
Trends in Classics - Scholarship in the Making welcomes monographs and collected volumes on the great personalities and lines of thought that have marked the developments within Classics over the centuries from Humanism down to the present day.
Series Editors:
Franco Montanari and Antonios Rengakos
Advisory Board:
Constanze Güthenke, Stephen Harrison, Luigi Lehnus, Irmgard Männlein-Robert, Filippomaria Pontani and Stefan Rebenich
This volume collects twenty-six papers from a conference held at the University of Rome “Tor Vergata” in June 2021. The essays cover a wide chronological span from the Renaissance to present day, and address the topic of Virgil’s commentaries from a variety of points of view. Some papers are devoted to the study of single commentators, both well-known, such as La Cerda, Heyne, and Conington, and more marginal to the canon, such as Nannius, Willichius, and Keightley. Wide-ranging themes encompassed by other papers include metamorphosis, Egypt and Africa, and the rediscovey of Homer in early modern commentaries. Also considered are the different geographical and cultural areas of production, from the commentaries by Jesuit scholars to the reception of Virgil in modern Russia.
The volume will be of interest both to scholars interested in the interpretation of Virgil’s texts and to scholars of classical reception.
It is unusual for a single scholar practically to reorient an entire sub-field of study, but this is what Chris Stray has done for the history of UK classical scholarship. His remarkable combination of interests in the sociology of scholars and scholarship, in the history of the book and of publishing, and (especially) in the detailed intellectual contextualisation of classical scholarship as a form of classical reception has fundamentally changed the way the history of British classics and its study is viewed.
A generation ago the history of classical scholarship still consisted largely of accounts of particular scholars and groups of scholars written by other scholars from a broadly biographical and ‘heroic individual’ perspective. In these works scholars often sought to find their own place in the great tradition, choosing to praise or blame those whose work they admired or deprecated, and to identify with particular schools or trends, and there were few attempts to provide a broader and less prosopographical perspective.
Almost all the chapters in the volume originated as papers at a conference in honour of the honorand, and have been improved both by discussion there and by the rigorous peer-review process conducted by the two experienced editors. It covers various aspects of classical reception, with a particular focus on the history of scholars, their institutions, and their writings; the main focus is on the UK, but there are also substantial engagements with continental Europe and (especially) the USA; the period covered runs from the Renaissance to the present. The cast contains a number of world-famous names. Unusually, the volume also contains an essay by the honorand, but we are very keen to include this, especially as it focusses on the topic of scholarly collaboration.
