Textuality versus Performativity in Neo-Latin Drama: Johannes Reuchlin's "Henno"

Abstract

In 1522, Erasmus added a dialogue to his Colloquia Familiaria. Entitled Apotheosis Capnionis, it was dedicated to the memory of the German humanist scholar, Johannes Reuchlin, who had died at the age of sixty-seven on the thirtieth of June that year.' Erasmus's dialogue provides terms with which to discuss the tensions in German-speaking central Europe between opposing cultural pressures: the classicizing tendencies of humanist high culture, and the tendency of vernacular culture since the medieval period to be rooted in popular forms. With reference to the dramatic tradition in particular, the dialogue suggests that the surface, textual fidelity of Reuchlin's dramas to respectable models of classical learnedness (the characteristic emphasized by the German humanists and later scholars) often masks their potentially disruptive performative energies their creative appropriation of subversive sources not only in the classical tradition, but also in popular forms somewhat closer to home.2