Jesús Muñoz Morcillo – författare

The emergence of ekphrasis as an aesthetic category in the Renaissance was influenced by ancient school rhetoric and literary tradition, from the Homeric epic to the Byzantine popularization of ekphrastic subgenres. This publication approaches the humanistic understanding of ekphrasis, shedding light on previously little-noted phenomena such as the school rhetorical characteristic of Giorgio Vasari's Vite or the traces of natural philosophical and technical descriptions in Renaissance visual culture, from emblem books and scientific treatises to sottobosco paintings and experimental poetry of the early Baroque, using the example of Luis de Góngora. Comprehensive study of the influence of the school rhetorical and literary tradition of ekphrasis on Renaissance visual cultureSpecial focus on the transmission and dissemination of early modern concepts of nature and ecology through emblem collections

Despite the efforts of modern scholars to explain the origins of science communication as a social, rhetorical, and aesthetic phenomenon, most researchers approach the popularization of science from the perspective of present issues, thus ignoring its historical roots in classical culture along with its continuities, disruptions, and transformations.This volume fills this research gap with a genealogically reflected introduction into the popularization of science as a recurrent cultural technique. The category »popular science« is elucidated in interdisciplinary and diachronic dialogue, discussing case studies from all historical periods.Classicists, archaeologists, medievalists, art historians, sociologists, and historians of science provide the first diachronic and multi-layered approach to the rhetoric techniques, aesthetics, and societal conditions that have shaped the dissemination and reception of scientific knowledge.