A question of genre: Philip Melanchthon's oratorical debut at Wittenberg University

Abstract

AbstractThe speech Philip Melanchthon gave on 29 August 1518 at the University of Wittenberg to initiate his professorship is an impressive piece of humanist idealism. Already its title, De corrigendis adolescentiae studiis (On the reform of the studies for the young) reveals his earnest ambitions in introducing reform. Not incidentally, thus, the speech received a lot of attention immediately after its delivery and enjoyed a remarkable popularity even decades after. The speech marks, however, not only an interesting object of study in terms of its content but also in terms of its generic form. Usually labelled as a declamation, this study will revaluate this generic attribution, for the first time, by arguing that the declamation as an academic genre was only introduced into the German academic landscape after Melanchthon's debut in Wittenberg and that De corrigendis adolescentiae studiis does not convincingly fit the standards of declamatory speech in many other respects. It will be shown that the category more apt for talking about Melanchthon's speech is that of the inaugural oration – a genre yet highly underappreciated in modern research on early modern academic oratory.