Johannes Helmrath – författare

The portrayal of princes plays a central role in the historical literature of the European Renaissance. The sixteen contributions collected in this volume examine such portrayals in a broad variety of historiographical, biographical, and poetic texts. It emerges clearly that historical portrayals were not essentially bound by generic constraints but instead took the form of res gestae or historiae, discrete or collective biographies, panegyric, mirrors for princes, epic poetry, orations, even commonplace books – whatever the occasion called for. Beyond questions of genre, the chapters focus on narrative strategies and the transformation of ancient, medieval, and contemporary authors, as well as on the influence of political, cultural, intellectual, and social contexts. Four broad thematic foci inform the structure of this book: the virtues ascribed to the prince, the cultural and political pretensions inscribed in literary portraits, the historical and literary models on which these portraits were based, and the method that underlay them. The volume is rounded out by a critical summary that considers the portrayal of princes in humanist historiogrpahy from the point of view of transformation theory.

Although Antiquity itself has been intensively researched, together with its reception, to date this has largely happened in a compartmentalized fashion. This series presents for the first time an interdisciplinary contextualization of the productive acquisitions and transformations of the arts and sciences of Antiquity in the slow process of the European societies constructing a scientific system and their own cultural identity, a process which started in the Middle Ages and has continued up to the Modern Age.The series is a product of work in the Collaborative Research Centre “Transformations of Antiquity” and the “August Boeckh Centre of Antiquity” at the Humboldt University of Berlin. Their individual projects examine transformational processes on three levels in particular ‒ the constitutive function of Antiquity in the formation of the European knowledge society, the role of Antiquity in the genesis of modern cultural identities and self-constructions, and the forms of reception in art, literature, translation and media._x000D_

Beyond Reception applies a new concept for analyzing cultural change, known as ‘transformation', the study of Renaissance humanism. Traditional scholarship takes the Renaissance humanists at their word, that they were simply viewing the ancient world as it actually was and recreating its key features within their own culture. Initially modern studies in the classical tradition accepted this claim and saw this process as largely passive. 'Transformation theory' emphasizes the active role played by the receiving culture both in constructing a vision of the past and in transforming that vision into something that was a meaningful part of the later culture. A chapter than explains the terminology and workings of 'transformation theory' is followed by essays by nine established experts that suggest how the key disciplines of grammar, rhetoric, history, poetry, and philosophy in the Renaissance represent transformations of what went on in these fields in ancient Greece and Rome. The picture that emerges suggests that Renaissance humanism as it was actually practiced both received and transformed the classical past, at the same time as it constructed a vision of that past that still resonates today.

Although Antiquity itself has been intensively researched, together with its reception, to date this has largely happened in a compartmentalized fashion. This series presents for the first time an interdisciplinary contextualization of the productive acquisitions and transformations of the arts and sciences of Antiquity in the slow process of the European societies constructing a scientific system and their own cultural identity, a process which started in the Middle Ages and has continued up to the Modern Age.The series is a product of work in the Collaborative Research Centre “Transformations of Antiquity” and the “August Boeckh Centre of Antiquity” at the Humboldt University of Berlin. Their individual projects examine transformational processes on three levels in particular ‒ the constitutive function of Antiquity in the formation of the European knowledge society, the role of Antiquity in the genesis of modern cultural identities and self-constructions, and the forms of reception in art, literature, translation and media._x000D_

Im Zentrum des Bandes steht die Frage nach der Diffusion des Humanismus. Von Italien ausgehend, wurde der Humanismus als intellektueller Habitus zu einem gesamteuropäischen Bildungsphänomen der Renaissance. Johannes Helmrath wirft in seinen Aufsätzen Schlaglichter auf zentrale Tätigkeitsfelder der Humanisten - Rhetorik, Geschichtsschreibung und die entstehenden Altertumswissenschaften. Eine Schlüsselfigur ist Enea Silvio Piccolomini (1405 - 1464). Über zwanzig Jahre lebte der Italiener in Deutschland, wirkte auf dem Basler Konzil und dann bis 1455 am Habsburgischen Kaiserhof. Seine lateinischen Briefe und Geschichtswerke wurden modellhaft, so dass man ihn als "Vater des Humanismus" diesseits der Alpen bezeichnet hat. Zurück in Italien wurde er Kardinal und Papst (Pius II, 1458 - 1464).