The Roman Republic Of Letters

Download or read book The Roman Republic of Letters written by Katharina Volk and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2023-12-05 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An intellectual history of the late Roman Republic—and the senators who fought both scholarly debates and a civil war In The Roman Republic of Letters, Katharina Volk explores a fascinating chapter of intellectual history, focusing on the literary senators of the mid-first century BCE who came to blows over the future of Rome even as they debated philosophy, history, political theory, linguistics, science, and religion. It was a period of intense cultural flourishing and extreme political unrest—and the agents of each were very often the same people. Members of the senatorial class, including Cicero, Caesar, Brutus, Cassius, Cato, Varro, and Nigidius Figulus, contributed greatly to the development of Roman scholarship and engaged in a lively and often polemical exchange with one another. These men were also crucially involved in the tumultuous events that brought about the collapse of the Republic, and they ended up on opposite sides in the civil war between Caesar and Pompey in the early 40s. Volk treats the intellectual and political activities of these “senator scholars” as two sides of the same coin, exploring how scholarship and statesmanship mutually informed one another—and how the acquisition, organization, and diffusion of knowledge was bound up with the question of what it meant to be a Roman in a time of crisis. By revealing how first-century Rome’s remarkable “republic of letters” was connected to the fight over the actual res publica, Volk’s riveting account captures the complexity of this pivotal period.

Download or read book The Roman Republic of Letters written by Katharina Volk and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-11-09 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An intellectual history of the late Roman Republic—and the senators who fought both scholarly debates and a civil war In The Roman Republic of Letters, Katharina Volk explores a fascinating chapter of intellectual history, focusing on the literary senators of the mid-first century BCE who came to blows over the future of Rome even as they debated philosophy, history, political theory, linguistics, science, and religion. It was a period of intense cultural flourishing and extreme political unrest—and the agents of each were very often the same people. Members of the senatorial class, including Cicero, Caesar, Brutus, Cassius, Cato, Varro, and Nigidius Figulus, contributed greatly to the development of Roman scholarship and engaged in a lively and often polemical exchange with one another. These men were also crucially involved in the tumultuous events that brought about the collapse of the Republic, and they ended up on opposite sides in the civil war between Caesar and Pompey in the early 40s. Volk treats the intellectual and political activities of these “senator scholars” as two sides of the same coin, exploring how scholarship and statesmanship mutually informed one another—and how the acquisition, organization, and diffusion of knowledge was bound up with the question of what it meant to be a Roman in a time of crisis. By revealing how first-century Rome’s remarkable “republic of letters” was connected to the fight over the actual res publica, Volk’s riveting account captures the complexity of this pivotal period.

Download or read book The Reach of the Republic of Letters written by Arjan Van Dixhoorn and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2008-09-30 with total page 543 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume questions the present-day assumption holding the Italian academies to be the model for the European literary and learned society, by juxtaposing them to other types of contemporary literary and learned associations in several Western European countries.

Download or read book The Republic of Arabic Letters written by Alexander Bevilacqua and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2018-02-23 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Herbert Baxter Adams Prize A Longman–History Today Book Prize Finalist A Sheik Zayed Book Award Finalist Winner of the Thomas J. Wilson Memorial Prize A Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year “Deeply thoughtful...A delight.”—The Economist “[A] tour de force...Bevilacqua’s extraordinary book provides the first true glimpse into this story...He, like the tradition he describes, is a rarity.” —New Republic In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a pioneering community of Western scholars laid the groundwork for the modern understanding of Islamic civilization. They produced the first accurate translation of the Qur’an, mapped Islamic arts and sciences, and wrote Muslim history using Arabic sources. The Republic of Arabic Letters is the first account of this riveting lost period of cultural exchange, revealing the profound influence of Catholic and Protestant intellectuals on the Enlightenment understanding of Islam. “A closely researched and engrossing study of...those scholars who, having learned Arabic, used their mastery of that difficult language to interpret the Quran, study the career of Muhammad...and introduce Europeans to the masterpieces of Arabic literature.” —Robert Irwin, Wall Street Journal “Fascinating, eloquent, and learned, The Republic of Arabic Letters reveals a world later lost, in which European scholars studied Islam with a sense of affinity and respect...A powerful reminder of the ability of scholarship to transcend cultural divides, and the capacity of human minds to accept differences without denouncing them.” —Maya Jasanoff “What makes his study so groundbreaking, and such a joy to read, is the connection he makes between intellectual history and the material history of books.” —Financial Times

Download or read book The Republic of Letters written by Marc Fumaroli and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2018-09-18 with total page 399 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A provocative exploration of intellectual exchange across four centuries of European history by the author of When the World Spoke French In this fascinating study, preeminent historian Marc Fumaroli reveals how an imagined “republic” of ideas and interchange fostered the Italian Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and the French Revolution. He follows exchanges among Petrarch, Erasmus, Descartes, Montaigne, and others from the fifteenth through the eighteenth centuries, through revolutions in culture and society. Via revealing portraits and analysis, Fumaroli traces intellectual currents engaged with the core question of how to live a moral life—and argues that these men of letters provide an example of the exchange of knowledge and ideas that is worthy of emulation in our own time. Combining scholarship, wit, and reverence, this thought†‘provoking volume represents the culmination of a lifetime of scholarship.

Download or read book The World Republic of Letters written by Pascale Casanova and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 446 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The "world of letters" has always seemed a matter more of metaphor than of global reality. In this book, Pascale Casanova shows us the state of world literature behind the stylistic refinements--a world of letters relatively independent from economic and political realms, and in which language systems, aesthetic orders, and genres struggle for dominance. Rejecting facile talk of globalization, with its suggestion of a happy literary "melting pot," Casanova exposes an emerging regime of inequality in the world of letters, where minor languages and literatures are subject to the invisible but implacable violence of their dominant counterparts. Inspired by the writings of Fernand Braudel and Pierre Bourdieu, this ambitious book develops the first systematic model for understanding the production, circulation, and valuing of literature worldwide. Casanova proposes a baseline from which we might measure the newness and modernity of the world of letters--the literary equivalent of the meridian at Greenwich. She argues for the importance of literary capital and its role in giving value and legitimacy to nations in their incessant struggle for international power. Within her overarching theory, Casanova locates three main periods in the genesis of world literature--Latin, French, and German--and closely examines three towering figures in the world republic of letters--Kafka, Joyce, and Faulkner. Her work provides a rich and surprising view of the political struggles of our modern world--one framed by sites of publication, circulation, translation, and efforts at literary annexation.

Download or read book Mortal Republic written by Edward J. Watts and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2018-11-06 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Learn why the Roman Republic collapsed -- and how it could have continued to thrive -- with this insightful history from an award-winning author. In Mortal Republic, prize-winning historian Edward J. Watts offers a new history of the fall of the Roman Republic that explains why Rome exchanged freedom for autocracy. For centuries, even as Rome grew into the Mediterranean's premier military and political power, its governing institutions, parliamentary rules, and political customs successfully fostered negotiation and compromise. By the 130s BC, however, Rome's leaders increasingly used these same tools to cynically pursue individual gain and obstruct their opponents. As the center decayed and dysfunction grew, arguments between politicians gave way to political violence in the streets. The stage was set for destructive civil wars -- and ultimately the imperial reign of Augustus. The death of Rome's Republic was not inevitable. In Mortal Republic, Watts shows it died because it was allowed to, from thousands of small wounds inflicted by Romans who assumed that it would last forever.