Writers and editors of Renaissance literature naturally were concerned with the accuracy and appropriateness of their texts. in the early Renaissance, the main preoccupations with textual accuracy pertained to the writings of classical Greek and Roman authors, as well as to biblical and patristic texts. By the late 16th century, such philological awareness included not only classical works and literature created during the 15th century, but also new writing as authors consulted lexicons, dictionaries, grammars, and other tools produced by humanists to enhance the written word. Renaissance translators often justified their linguistic methods in prefaces that emphasized the power of rhetoric in literary language and the power of language itself. Words and language as concepts were included among the literary images in several major works, for example, in the novels of Francois Rabelais (1483-c. 1553). Renaissance humanism was the principal impetus for the new textual focus, especially for works written in Latin, the universal language of educated people. As the printing press made texts available to a much broader audience than had been possible in the manuscript market of the early 15th century, literature in the vernacular languages became increasingly popular. Learned individuals debated the validity of writing in the vernacular language (the italian spoken in Tuscany was the first example) instead of in the classical Latin of Cicero and his contemporaries. Similar controversies in several regions of Europe resulted in the eventual literary ascendancy of English over the Celtic (Gaelic) of Scotland, French over the Celtic (Breton) of Brittany, and so on, as the various national literatures began to coalesce into their modern forms. Other
Handbook to Life in Renaissance Europe
5.1 Scene of the assassination of Julius Caesar, from the first illustrated edition of the works of the classical Roman poet Horace. The woodcut illustrated an ode to Caesar by Horace. Published in Germany in 1498, this book was also the first edition of Horace issued by a printer in Germany (actually Strasbourg, a German city at that time).
(Photograph courtesy of Sotheby’s, Inc., © 2003)
Debates concerned the appropriateness of classical Latin itself as a literary language.
World History
