Humanist Practice Research Articles

Parallel Posts, Tumblr, and the Necessity of Poetry in the Digital Age: 'You are starved for it and you don't even realise you're hungry'

This article explores the emergent format of ‘parallel posts’ or ‘web weaving’, a practice of literary collage on blogging website Tumblr, and argues that they represent a new wave of poetry reception, unbound to formal literary education or to conventional spheres of cultural capital. Following Audre Lorde’s ‘Poetry is not a luxury’, I discuss parallel posts as a vital component of the broader digital literary sphere, a counterpoint to Instapoetry, and as a resurgence of commonplace book-keeping. I analyse the prevalence of users positioning poetry on Tumblr as akin to or superior to school-bound English education, and parallel posts as a humanist practice. I conclude by arguing that parallel posts represent a reclamation of poetry as a common resource and an ideology.

Nec doctum satis: humanist translation and English recreational song

Abstract Studies of the literary dimensions of English Renaissance madrigals frequently cordon off these works from non-musical forms, such as the prosodic experiments being carried out by humanist poets or the humanist practices of literary translation and imitation. Conversely, studies of humanist translation in England almost never consider recreational song, instead focusing exclusively on more ‘serious’ genres. However, several collections of recreational song published in the period present these songs as legitimate humanist works. In some cases, these collections offer the first English translations of classical and Renaissance poems. Nicholas Yonge’s Musica transalpina (1588) and Thomas Watson’s Italian madrigalls Englished (1590), for example, call attention to their translations of eminent Italian poets (Petrarch, Ariosto, Tasso) and address themselves to classically learned readers. The humanist character of such anthologies was well enough known to be satirized by Thomas Weelkes in his Ayeres and phantasticke spirites (1608), whose classical references have seldom been seriously considered. At the heart of these exchanges is an implicit debate over whether recreational song texts are an appropriate vehicle for humanist learning.

The Contribution of Ramakrishna Mission (RKM) towards World Culture

In Indian tradition, the religious development of a person is completed when he experiences the world within himself. Sri Ramakrishna, a Bengali temple-priest propagated a new interpretation of the Hindu scriptures. Without formal education, he interpreted the essence of the scriptures with unprecedented simplicity. With deep insight into the rapidly changing social scenario, he realized the necessity of a humanist religious practice. Therefore, adopting a modern perspective, this paper attempts to highlight the contribution of Sri Ramakrishna in India towards the world culture. Qualitative methods through a systematic sociohistorical analysis that summarized the literature based on documents, books and journals are used in this paper. The results show that the Ramakrishna Mission movement has contributed significantly to Indian civilization in education, humanity, literature and spirituality. Although they are not politically involved, their contribution remains significant in shaping a free-thinking, self-respecting and fearless citizen towards British colonial in India.

Disordered Books and Dynamic Archives: Rabbinic Scholarly Practices in Early Modern Ashkenaz

This article examines early modern learning through Ashkenazic responsa. Beyond explicit evidence from published responsa collections, implicit insights dwell in what these publications lack. These missing features shed light on sixteenth-century scholarly practices. The works’ organizational inconsistencies must be understood in context of learned archives. Such an adjustment offers a corrective to the regnant narrative, which views the introduction of print as a sharp rupture from earlier modes of transmission. This article suggests instead that the culture of printed books coexisted with older approaches, and that print was complemented by more disorderly and unconstrained forms of transmission. Comparing rabbinic “paper-ware” with contemporaneous humanist practices highlights the rabbi's working papers, focusing on a culture's dynamic activity rather than its stable output. This shift in perspective allows us to see rabbinic writings not merely as a collection of books but as a mode of scholarship.

Medievalism and Political Rhetoric in Humanist Historiography from the Low Countries (1515–1609) by Coen Maas

Reviewed by: Medievalism and Political Rhetoric in Humanist Historiography from the Low Countries (1515–1609) by Coen Maas Christian Thorsten Callisen Maas, Coen, Medievalism and Political Rhetoric in Humanist Historiography from the Low Countries (1515–1609) (Proteus: Studies in Early Modern Identity Formation, 7), Turnhout, Brepols, 2018; hard cover; pp. xix, 541; 25 b/w illustrations; R.R.P. €125.00; ISBN 9782503557113. In this book, Coen Maas takes 'the apparent contradiction between the humanist aversion to the Middle Ages on the one hand, and the meticulous study of the period by humanist historians on the other' (p. 4) as his starting point, and undertakes a critical review of medievalism among sixteenth-century humanists in the Low Countries. Maas focuses his analysis on the political context in which these authors worked, exploring how medieval practices and ideas were [End Page 239] redeployed in the service of contemporary political objectives. In so doing, Maas provides valuable insights into early modern humanist practice, and challenges the commonplace view that early modern humanists saw the Middle Ages almost exclusively as an unproductive, 'dark' period of history, and their role as 'the saviours of the classical heritage' (p. 32). Maas undertakes his analysis through several case studies. To each of these he brings a comprehensive arsenal of analytical tools, variously deploying rhetorical, comparative, and intertextual analyses to interpret the texts at hand. He carefully avoids anachronistic readings of his subjects, taking into account early modern genre conventions; reading and writing practice; and political, educational, and scholarly contexts. Maas establishes the groundwork for this work in Chapters 1 and 2, which introduce the concepts and tools of textual analysis used in the rest of the book, and provide a useful overview of early modern humanist historical practice. Maas's writing is clear and unambiguous, with signposts that support his reader on the journey. Through his case studies, Maas argues that, far from the Middle Ages being an unproductive, barren wasteland for early modern humanists, this period in history served as a rich and adaptable source that could be drawn on and put into service for a contemporary audience. Of course, the classical topoi that are so recognizable in early modern humanist writings continue to be found, and ancient Roman and Greek authors maintain a definitive influence over these texts, yet Maas shows us convincingly that medieval authors also had a significant part to play in shaping his subjects' rhetorical and historiographical practice. Chapters 3 to 7 present Maas's case studies: Reynier Snoy's Historia Hollandie (c. 1516–17); Adrianus Barlandus's Cronica Brabantiae ducum (1526); Petrus Divaeus's manuscript writings on the history of Brabant (c. 1563); Janus Dousa Sr's verse history of Holland (1599); and the Dousas' (Sr and Jr) prose history of Holland (1601). In each of these, Maas demonstrates a thorough knowledge of the contexts in which these men were writing, as well as the contemporaneous practices that shaped their work. He explores each of their political environments, taking into account their professional backgrounds, work, and patronage relationships. Maas also demonstrates how these authors redeployed medieval tropes and ideas in service of their own political objectives. Traversing the better part of the sixteenth century, these case studies illustrate, on a micro scale, the evolution of historiographical practice in the Low Countries during this time. As one progresses from one case study to the next, one sees clear links between the various texts under consideration, and Maas effectively demonstrates how Snoy, Barlandus, Divaeus, and the Dousas deployed different textual and rhetorical techniques to present their preferred view of history. Unsurprisingly, this view evolved in line with the circumstances of the authors and the changing political landscape in the Low Countries. Chapter 8 complements this implicit chronological comparison with an excursus on the evolution of Latin and vernacular languages during this time. [End Page 240] The texts that Maas has analysed in this book used Latin to communicate with their audiences, and Maas is interested in understanding the specific affordances that Latin provided compared to vernacular languages. He is careful to avoid reductionist ideas about the relationship between Latin and the vernacular, using this chapter to explore broader questions around the audience...

Spirits of Place in American Literary Culture by John Gatta

Reviewed by: Spirits of Place in American Literary Culture by John Gatta Lars Erik Larson (bio) Spirits of Place in American Literary Culture John Gatta Oxford University Press, 2018. vii + 286 pp. $36.95 hardcover. Conventional views oppose spirituality and materiality; to connect with the former, one must either withdraw to the mind’s monastery or enclose oneself in a world-eclipsing temple. But as John Gatta’s latest book aims to show, this dichotomy is false: material place (houses, rivers, paths, cemeteries, geological sites, university campuses, and even cities) can help us find a spiritual center. Creative literature, the book asserts, maps how religious encounters with such places are achieved. Studies of literary place-making have a long tradition, and theory’s spatial turn of the past few decades have led to richly interdisciplinary explorations of the urgencies of spatial considerations. Gatta’s niche within this ferment is the spiritual angle, which even the mature field of ecocriticism has not fully plumbed. Spirits of Place in American Literary Culture expands on the broad timespan of Gatta’s previous eco-focused study Making Nature Sacred: Literature, Religion, and Environment in American from the Puritans to the Present (2004), to incorporate more of the human-built environment in the making of the sacred. In Gatta’s aim to show that the literary imagination both describes and creates spiritual place, chapters move across types of topoi: spirituality in literature’s houses (Thoreau’s economic cabin, Stowe’s slave abodes, Hawthorne’s haunted seven-gabled house, Cather’s Anasazi cliffs); sites of mobility (Carolyn Servid’s Glacier Bay, Momaday’s nomadic re-tracings, Muir’s saunterings); imagined space (Whitman’s spatial transcendence, Marilyn Nelson’s palimpsestic Tuskegee, Alfredo Véa Jr.’s Southwest squatter community); and outdoor geographies (Hawthorne’s Niagara Falls, Melville’s seas, Edward Abbey’s deserts, Lincoln’s Gettysburg, and the New York City sidewalks of Kazin, Day, and Baldwin). The book then shifts to a concluding [End Page 225] pedagogy-based chapter, on using the site of the university to teach undergraduates the skills of spatial attention, contemplative learning, and place-making—which the previous chapters have exemplified. The book’s presentation is unabashedly personal: Gatta moves frequently from literary points to personal encounters with the literature’s eclectic spaces. At times, the logic of the places the book covers seems to arise from the happenstance of the author’s own connections with them, rather than offering a more deliberative system of selection. These personal asides in places derail from the book’s aims (as when Gatta’s following of the fate of Stowe’s birth-home gets treated far longer than the pages can justify). But the author remains unfazed by the sometimes-desultory drift of chapter structure. After all, the personalized tone models the humanist practice of what it preaches—which suits a book that concludes in a directly pedagogical emphasis. Spirits of Place is strongest when it mines the rich set of tensions at the heart of its subject: of topophilia’s mix of materialist and spiritual longings; how a place like Devil’s Tower/Bear’s Lodge in Wyoming exemplifies “how conflicting sacralizations can converge upon a relatively limited space of terrain” (142); Wendell Berry’s “globally engaged localism” (101) set in dialogue with Ursula Heise’s skepticism of localism; Edward Abbey’s atheistic anticlericalism set against his own ecospiritual proximity to “John Calvin’s sense of the nonhuman world as a theatre of divine glory” (172). Aside from a few points from thinkers like Husserl, Bachelard, Tuan, and Heise, the book does not draw significantly from the theoretical storehouse that the spatial turn has generated, while also avoiding much in the way of theological criticism. This absence enables the study to stay compact, straightforward, and lucid. But it also limits Gatta’s ability to take a critical stand beyond the series of humanist commonplaces it points to. The lack of a more specific theoretical framework also limits the book’s ability to break new ground in its specific area of spirituality, as the subject remains generalized. In categorizing the divine, Gatta aims to be admirably open-minded, encompassing such spiritual forms as the polytheistic...

The Renaissance Reform of the Book and Britain: The English Quattrocento by David Rundle

Reviewed by: The Renaissance Reform of the Book and Britain: The English Quattrocento by David Rundle Mimi Ensley Renaissance, periodization, manuscript studies, humanism David Rundle. The Renaissance Reform of the Book and Britain: The English Quattrocento. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. 362 pp., 54 black and white illustrations + 16 color illustrations. $99.99. ISBN: 978-1-107-19343-7. David Rundle's The Renaissance Reform of the Book and Britain challenges the notion that England's was a belated engagement with Renaissance humanism. The book thereby problematizes existing conceptions of "medieval" and "Renaissance" in Britain.While scholars have become increasingly comfortable upsetting traditional period divisions and questioning grand narratives about England's Renaissance, Rundle adds to such work through his particular focus on scribes, scripts, and manuscripts. This work thus supplements and enriches such existing studies as Daniel Wakelin's Humanism, Reading, and English Literature (2007) and David R. Carlson's English Humanist Books (1993). While Rundle's paleographical work is the book's methodological backbone, he uses this bibliographical focus to support several case studies centered around particular characters—the book's "heroes," as Rundle sometimes calls them. The reader encounters such well-known figures as Pieter Meghen and Poggio Bracciolini alongside understudied personages like George of Kynninmonth, whom Rundle deems Scotland's first humanist, and Petrus Lomer, a humanist scribe active in England in the early fifteenth century. Rundle's "heroes" originate om and migrate between such locales as Venice, Oxford, Scotland, Rome, Westminster, and the Low Countries, weaving together a story of humanism in which Italy is one node among many in the spread of humanist practices. Indeed, the cosmopolitan nature of humanist scribes and their influences is one of several interrelated themes in Rundle's book. The humanist reform of the book, Rundle argues, was not a case of Italians spreading their scribal practices unidirectionally; instead, non-Italians had considerable agency in the development of humanist scripts and manuscript designs. [End Page 350] Moreover, in addition to the geographic mobility of scribes, Rundle emphasizes their "graphic mobility," their ability to incorporate elements of humanist scripts but not abandon other forms entirely. That a scribe could shift between a variety of modes with ease is a claim central to the book's arguments about periodization. The rise of humanist bookhands in England is not a starting point for inevitable progress away om the "medieval." Rather, humanist scripts became an additional tool in the scribe's existing retinue. Rundle develops these claims across six main chapters and a conclusion, all of which merge careful paleographical study with historical contextualization to revise existing narratives about the Renaissance in England. Chapter 1 sets up the rest of the book, as Rundle describes the key features of littera antiqua and humanist scribal practices. Here, and throughout the book, Rundle centers humanist work occurring in England and by non- Italians, turning om Poggio Bracciolini and Niccolò Niccoli to Tito Livio Frulovisi, whose four years of work in England influenced English practices. Next, Chapter 2's argument is primarily temporal, showing that England's engagements with the humanist scripts was not belated but instead began well before the Tudors. In Rundle's words, the "earlier decades of the fifteenth century provide not a prelude but the defining first acts" of humanism's story in England (51). To show this, Rundle traces networks of influence, what he calls "palaeographical prosopography," demonstrating how the scripts of Italians in England shaped their non-Italian associates' works. Where Chapter 2 examines humanist scripts produced in England, Chapter 3 looks to British scribes abroad. While Rundle finds records of relatively large numbers of non-Italians at work as scribes in Italy, British copyists are more difficult to track down with certainty. Still, George of Kynninmonth, "Scotland's first humanist," proves a fascinating non-English case study and further demonstrates the polygraphism central to Rundle's claims. In Chapter 4, focus shifts to the Low Countries, and Rundle demonstrates how scribes om the Netherlands, including Theodric Werken and Pieter Meghen, were significant in shaping humanist work in England. The chapter also includes an intriguing section about the effects of printed books on the scribes featured, suggesting that...

‘Feminizing’ Saint Augustine’s City of God: Sister Veronica, the library and scriptorium at Santo Spirito, Verona

AbstractAugustine's City of God has been studied in a humanist context and the impact of its vernacular translation on women readers has not been considered. This essay presents an Italian codex copied by nun scribe Veronica in 1472 in the Benedictine convent Santo Spirito, Verona. It examines the convent's social history, literary and devotional culture known through a library inventory dating c.1475, extant manuscripts and early printed books. The content and appeal of the library for elementary and advanced readers is analyzed. The active scribal culture is seen through nun scribe Scholastica Maffei who had strong humanist connections and Domicilla Bernabuzi da Faenza who translated a religious treatise for presentation to a mentor, a reflection of humanist practices. Veronica's City of God, follows no known iconographic model and has unique pen and ink miniatures that express tension, emotional conflict, an understanding of Augustine's philosophy, and her role in mediating the text with allegorical imagery for her community. This is the first study of a vernacular copy produced by a nun and shows how women religious read and reacted to Augustine's popular text.

To “maister the circumstance”: Mulcaster’sPositionsand Spenser’sFaerie Queene

This essay argues that the prominent Elizabethan pedagogue Richard Mulcaster exerted a considerable influence on the narrative strategies of his pupil Edmund Spenser, especially as seen in Book I of The Faerie Queene. Where recent scholars such as Jeff Dolven and Andrew Wallace have maintained that Spenser was critical of many of the humanist practices they deem prevalent in the Elizabethan classroom, this study shows that such critique of humanism was already a basic part of the reformed curriculum at Merchant Taylors’ School, where Spenser received his early training under Mulcaster. The essay first provides a reading of Mulcaster’s main pedagogical text, Positions (1581), and then applies its key concepts to a reading of Book I of Spenser’s poem with a double emphasis on the hero of the poem, Redcrosse, and on the reader’s interaction with the text. The most important of these concepts is the seemingly innocuous term “circumstance.” Aside from being a key concept within forensic oratory, to “maister the circumstance” is for Mulcaster a shorthand for a cautious approach to the classical text studied in his classroom. The same strategy, this essay argues, is implemented in the poem. The reader must pay attention to the circumstances, with their rhetorical, pedagogical, and theological connotations, triggered in large part by the apparent inability of Redcrosse, the putative hero of the book, to do so. Additionally, as a subcategory of the rhetorical connotations, there is also the need to assess the use of names in the poem.

Opvattingen van Nederlandse en Vlaamse jongeren over de gewenste verhouding tussen levensbeschouwing en overheid

This contribution elaborates on the role of the government in relationship to philosophy of life in general, and formation in particular, as ideally perceived by young people in the Netherlands and Flanders. It serves two goals: (1) to show to what extent youth, committed in their philosophy of life, agree with each of four typologically distinguished models of the relationship between philosophy of life and state: autonomyliberalism; diversityliberalism; groupcommunitarianism; and statecommunitarianism; and (2) to test whether different religious and philosophical convictions and practices influence the agreement with these typological models of the relationship between philosophy of life and state. The analysis shows that youth prefer a cooperative but restrained relationship between philosophy of life and state. Differences in preference between religious and humanist groups (i.e. Catholics, Protestants, Moslims and Humanists) are bigger than differences between Dutch and Flemish youth. Analysis also shows that religious and humanist convictions and practices play a role in the levels of agreement with each of the typologically distinguished models.

Humanists and Travellers, Gorgons and Gorillas: Hanno the Navigator's Periplus and Early Modern Geography (1530–1630)

ABSTRACTThis article is concerned with early modern interpretations of Hanno the Navigator's Periplus, an ancient travel account of a Carthaginian voyage down the coasts of Africa. The early modern period saw a rise in interest in geographical knowledge, and the ways in which different authors used Hanno's voyage reflects their understanding of the role of geography in conceptualising the world. In these discussions, writers had to negotiate between the confusing portrayals of the voyage in the received classical tradition and new reports brought by voyages of exploration. Here, I will discuss how these syntheses between humanist methods and contemporary travellers' accounts were shaped by the economic and political concerns tied to the first wave of European overseas expansion. Amid this climate, ancient geographical knowledge found pragmatic applications in contemporary issues of navigation, commerce and claims of territorial possession, as well as shaping European perceptions of ‘self’ and ‘the other’. This paper thus seeks to situate humanist practices and classical knowledge within the wider context of overseas voyages and early modern political and economic developments.

Critical proximity

This article explores the relationship between critical distance and the idea of proximity. In times that are often described as ‘global’, ‘24/7’, ‘connected’, ‘networked’ and ‘immersive’, distance seems ever reduced and proximity omnipresent. The contemporary impression of ubiquitous proximity might constitute a threat to the survival of critical distance understood either as a cornerstone of enlightened and humanist critical practice or as a key metaphysical ‘technology’. The resulting ‘crisis of critical distance’ produces the question of how to position oneself with regard to the ‘other’ in a time that lacks distance and privileges proximity? In tracking the ambiguity (or the ‘aporia’) that surrounds proximity – the desire to be near and the need to maintain a distance – this article rereads some key Heideggerian and Derridean texts in order to attempt a deconstruction of the opposition of distance and proximity at work in the ‘metaphysics of presence’.

"Unfolding Rationality:Visual Memory, Performative Accountability, and Order"

Accounting is routinely treated as key element to the rationalization of modern economies and societies. This paper brings extensive archival material on early accountability practices of the Society of Jesus into the view of theories of organization, to pivot now standard accounts of the relationship between accounting and organizational rationality. I link the genesis of accounting to the 17th century movement of humanist practices into large-scale administrative routines in the Jesuit organization. Their accounting incorporated a notion of rationality that did not presuppose an external ordering principle; instead, ‘rationality’ was founded in a process continuous questioning framed by common, purposeful commitments. I describe this notion of ‘unfolding rationality’ across three areas of Jesuit practice. This historical project further identifies a crucial moment when the translation of humanist practices into the realm of administration initiated a process of separation between ‘why’ actions were performed (a moral issue) with ‘how’ they are done (a matter of skill). I speculate on the implications of these finding for theories of organization, rationality, and logics.

Toward a hermeneutics of doodling in the era of Folly

Erasmus' doodles, and those of his circle of acquaintances, serve as evocative relics of their textual sociability, registering their peculiar habits of visualization. As remnants of active textual engagement, doodles bring into higher relief the reciprocity of linguistic production and visual conception, the correspondence of scribal techniques and graphic illustration, and the psychically charged vacillation between readership and authorship. The drawings, illustrations, and paintings considered in this essay lie at the intersection of humanist visual and literary culture in the years surrounding the publication of The Praise of Folly and suggest the powerful identification these erudite men felt toward the figure of Folly, as an exemplar of sorts. Read alongside formal portraits Erasmus commissioned to construct an extra-textual ‘public’ face, the scholar's travestied autographs shadowed and prefigured his self-promotional machinations. As a patron and promoter of portraiture, Erasmus valued art's ability to rewrite the autonomous body as a social intertext, a visual corollary of the emulative circuitry of humanist rhetorical practices. However, as the humorlessness of the Luther-bloc radicalized reformatory rhetoric, iconoclastic and censorial fury – the dark side of doodling – turned against the image of Erasmus in word and image, undercutting hopes for moderate church reform.

The ordering of things: visual syntax in the poetry of Eleni Vakalo

Erasmus' doodles, and those of his circle of acquaintances, serve as evocative relics of their textual sociability, registering their peculiar habits of visualization. As remnants of active textual engagement, doodles bring into higher relief the reciprocity of linguistic production and visual conception, the correspondence of scribal techniques and graphic illustration, and the psychically charged vacillation between readership and authorship. The drawings, illustrations, and paintings considered in this essay lie at the intersection of humanist visual and literary culture in the years surrounding the publication of The Praise of Folly and suggest the powerful identification these erudite men felt toward the figure of Folly, as an exemplar of sorts. Read alongside formal portraits Erasmus commissioned to construct an extra-textual ‘public’ face, the scholar's travestied autographs shadowed and prefigured his self-promotional machinations. As a patron and promoter of portraiture, Erasmus valued art's ability to rewrite the autonomous body as a social intertext, a visual corollary of the emulative circuitry of humanist rhetorical practices. However, as the humorlessness of the Luther-bloc radicalized reformatory rhetoric, iconoclastic and censorial fury – the dark side of doodling – turned against the image of Erasmus in word and image, undercutting hopes for moderate church reform.

Specimen Lists: Artisanal Writing or Natural Historical Paperwork?

The epistolary exchanges of early modern natural history have long been of interest to historians of science, as they reflect the dynamic nature of the emergent discipline better than the printed volumes of natural history. Less attention, at least until recently, has been paid to the unfinished pieces, the cryptic marginalia, and the practical notes that more often than not accompanied letters. Lists of specimens sent or requested were among the new tools at the naturalist's disposal for dealing with a scientific world increasingly populated by objects. This essay seeks to reconstruct the genealogy of specimen lists by focusing on little-known apothecaries in northern Italy: the individuals traditionally held to be social counterparts to these modest strings of words. It seems that the operations at the back of the shop and the literature generated by the centuries-old drug and spice trades may have been a more defining influence on early modern naturalists than the humanist practices of indexing and commonplacing that were concurrently embraced by Italian studiosi.

The Verse Divisions of the New Testament and the Literary Culture of the Reformation

The numbered verses in Robert Estienne's 1551 Greek New Testament represent an extraordinary device in the history of reference technologies: the use of a single unit of discourse to organize an entire text. While this device departs from conventional systems of reference, earlier and later, it reflects the unique literary culture of the Reformation. This essay investigates contemporary strategies of academic reference in order to contextualize Estienne's verse divisions and show that they are neither natural nor arbitrary, but an artifact of humanist reading practices. Three strategies of academic reference are in focus: translating, lecturing and note taking, and quoting exemplary texts in dictionaries. Habits of reference to texts at the level of the enunciation illuminate the invention—and immediate popularity—of Estienne's verse divisions.

'Many kinds of old, heathen, imperial pennies and the like antiquities'

German princely collections of the Renaissance grew out of humanist practice, but there is little direct evidence of that transition. This is one reason why scholars often turn to the well-documented collecting activities of Albrecht V of Bavaria, especially in his greatly changed but still extant Antiquarium. This paper, on the other hand, examines the vanished antiquities of his cousin, Ottheinrich, Elector Palatine, who left a wealth of documents detailing how he assembled and displayed his collections. Ottheinrich's documents enable us better to trace how princes adopted humanist collecting in the second quarter of the sixteenth century. Other evidence indicates that, in addition to Albrecht, he also influenced successive electors Palatine. Later events destroyed the Palatine collections and caused Ottheinrich's importance to be forgotten, although major collections rest on foundations that he laid.

The future of communication and media studies: we can drop our tools

This article focuses on the future of communication and media studies in South Africa. As such, it appeals to fragments of pasts and presents. It makes specific reference to two recent projects in the now popular work of scenario building. These two projects are South Africa scenarios 2025: the future we chose? and The Dinokeng scenarios. In the light of overviews of the findings of these two projects, a call is made to establish cultures and therefore practices that enable questioning. In the face of our development challenges, the simple point is that we contribute beyond the ken of any individual when we invest time, resources, hopes and expectations in inquiry. The future of communication and media studies is in our hands. In this sense it is important to offer the obvious answer which says our humanist practice can overcome forms of constraint by which ‘blindness’ is prioritised. This article, then, affirms the view that the grace of the present is of opportunities to change the world by living it.

Humanism, Reading, and English Literature 1430-1530

Was humanism without Latin a dead letter? The early quattrocento scholars who brandished the term studia humanitatis as their new slogan would have said so; their commitment to the language of Cicero was at the expense of the volgare. We might wish it were not so, and strain to link humanism with vernaculars far removed from the Italian peninsula. There is a lazy way of achieving this, by taking ‘humanism’ to be a Weltanschauung which spread across Europe and could be adopted in many tongues. Or there is a more forensic—and less tried—course which involves isolating what is particular in humanist practice and detecting moments when those habits or gestures were transferred to literatures in other traditions. Dr Wakelin follows this second route and with painstaking skill and shrewd insight compiles a new tale very much worth telling. Wakelin takes his story from the circle around Humfrey, duke of Gloucester, in the 1430s to Elyot and Lupset writing a century later. What he detects is that, alongside English interest in humanist writings in their original Latin, there developed a tradition of vernacular engagement with the studia humanitatis, expressed through the practice of translation and the adoption of humanist gestures. Like English humanist interest itself, this tradition of engagement did not have to wait for Henry VII and his successors to begin. It developed within manuscript culture; but, at the end of the fifteenth century, it became ‘institutionalised’—and, one might say, downgraded to a classroom skill, as Wakelin suggests in his discussion of John Anwykyll's remedial grammatical textbooks. The writers who walk across the pages of this book include John Lydgate, William Caxton and Thomas More but, for the most part, they are either lesser names such as Osbern Bokenham and Henry Medwall, or authors and readers who lurk in anonymity.