Current projects by Simon Smets
This project shows for the first time how 15th-century humanists crafted their letter collections... more This project shows for the first time how 15th-century humanists crafted their letter collections into autonomous narratives. These narratives transcend historical accuracy and even self-promotion to construct a literary product. They use specific signposting to guide the reader through a fragmented collection to an understanding of its overarching sense. Such a reading destabilises our current conception of these letters as historical accounts of their author’s personal experiences or intellectual development. The result is a new awareness of their multifaceted and gripping literary character.
This will be the first English translation of Basinio da Parma's neo-Latin epic poem 'Hesperis,' ... more This will be the first English translation of Basinio da Parma's neo-Latin epic poem 'Hesperis,' complete with annotations and introduction. Basinio da Parma was one of the most prolific neo-Latin authors of the long first half of the fifteenth century. During his short life from 1425 to 1457, he composed a collection of verse epistles, an epyllion on the hero Meleager, and a didactic poem on astronomy. His magnum opus was, however, the Hesperis. My proposed book for the first time presents this work to modern readers. Hesperis was the first large-scale neo-Latin epic ever completed and deals with the military endeavours of Sigismondo Malatesta (1417–1468), lord of Rimini and from 1450 patron of Basinio. The writing of the Hesperis started after Basinio’s moved from Ferrara to the Malatesta court in Rimini, and deals with historical events from 1447 to 1453. Alongside this feature mythological episodes involving gods and scenes set in the afterworld. The first six books narrate the campaign of Sigismondo against King Alfonso of Naples. The following three describe his journey to the Isles of the Blessed, where he not only meets ancient heroes, but also his future wife Isotta degli Atti who features in Basinio’s epistolary poetry. After this excursion, the poem returns to the historical events of Sigismondo’s war against King Ferrante, son and successor of Alfonso. The work ends with Sigismondo’s victory and the erection of the Tempio Malatestiano in Rimini. The variation of vivid battle scenes, detailed descriptions, and mythological digressions make for a thrilling piece of renaissance literature. Its indebtedness to Homer, Vergil, but also to Statius and Lucan, make it a striking example of the humanist poetics based on ancient models. Its historiographical importance, moreover, is clear from the political allusions and descriptions of battle scenes characterised by an inventive use of the Latin vocabulary. The book’s introduction will introduce the reader to the historical and intellectual context in which the Hesperis was written. It also sheds light on the 19th and 20th-century reception of the Malatestian court culture and Basinio da Parma in particular. The annotations to the poem will explain relevant historical events and indicate literary sources for specific passages.
Articles by Simon Smets
Journal of Latin Cosmopolitanism and European Literatures, 2023
This article considers the presence of Latin in art from the beginning of the twentieth century u... more This article considers the presence of Latin in art from the beginning of the twentieth century until today. It analyses works by Giorgio de Chirico, Max Ernst, Joseph Kosuth, Giulio Paolini, Rosemarie Trockel, Ian Hamilton Finlay and William Kentridge, and compares their engagement with the Latin language. The article is structured according to the different ways in which these artists unsettle the status of Latin, be it through semantic confusion, material recontextualisation or textual destabilising.
Humanistica Lovaniensia, 2022
Basinio da Parma's Neo-Latin epic Hesperis combines two main intertexts: Vergil's Aeneid and the ... more Basinio da Parma's Neo-Latin epic Hesperis combines two main intertexts: Vergil's Aeneid and the Homeric epics. This article argues that Basinio highlighted the tensions arising from this combination of models through the poem's paratextual features. The article focuses on the title's implications, on the considerable rewriting of the proem in Basinio's autograph version, and, finally, on the author's marginal annotations in the same manuscript. The conclusion is that rather than merely promoting his knowledge of Greek, as previous scholars have argued, Basinio's paratexts highlight on a meta-poetical level the difficulties of combining two closely related, but conflicting literary models.
The Year’s Work in Modern Language Studies, 2022
This is the authors' version of the article. For the published version, please consult the journa... more This is the authors' version of the article. For the published version, please consult the journal.
This article discusses the various facets of love found in Marsilio Ficino’s epistolary collection. We demonstrate that the appearance of love in Ficino’s letters can be roughly divided into three stages, which coincide with the ascent from interpersonal love between a philosopher and his pupil to societal engagement to a contemplation of the divine and cosmic unity. We argue that, in this respect, the Florentine philosopher’s letter collection complemented and developed the themes discussed in his other writings, including, above all, De amore and De vita.
Encyclopedia Entries by Simon Smets
Springer Encyclopedia of Renaissance Philosophy, 2019
Giorgio Valla was a fifteenth-century humanist who studied and worked in Pavia, Genova, and Venic... more Giorgio Valla was a fifteenth-century humanist who studied and worked in Pavia, Genova, and Venice. He established a remarkable collection of manuscripts that fuelled his study and translation projects. Although he also provided commentaries on Cicero and Juvenal, Valla focused on Greek scientific texts, which he translated into Latin. From around 1470 until his death, Valla was also occupied with writing an encyclopedia in which he collected all his knowledge based on mainly Greek authors. The encyclopedia’s lack of structure and the philological errors have provoked harsh criticism from the Renaissance until modern times, but it was nevertheless read by the greatest early modern scientists during their formation.
Book Reviews by Simon Smets
Anzeiger für die Altertumswissenschaft, 2020
Anzeiger für die Altertumswissenschaft, 2019
International Journal of the Classical Tradition, 2019
Conference Papers by Simon Smets
Metageitnia, 2023
Mein Beitrag befasst sich mit dem Poematum libri tres (1728) des Olivier de Reylofs, eines Adlige... more Mein Beitrag befasst sich mit dem Poematum libri tres (1728) des Olivier de Reylofs, eines Adligen aus Gent (heute in Belgien und zu seinen Lebzeiten Teil der spanischen und österreichischen Niederlande) aus dem frühen18. Jahrhundert. Reylof war ein lateinischer Amateurdichter mit einem für seine Zeit bemerkenswert umfangreichen poetischen Oeuvre. Ich werde eine Einführung in den Inhalt des Werks geben und mich auf die wiederholten Anspielungen auf Vergil als Vorbild für die thematische Auswahl konzentrieren. Reylof
Nebrija en Alcalá de Henares (1513-1522) y su legado, 2022
International Society for the Study of Surrealism, 2022
XVIIIth International Congress of the International Association for Neo-Latin Studies, Feb 8, 2022
Renaissance Society of America Annual Meeting, 2022
Afterlives Conference (Glendale, California, US), Nov 6, 2021
Society for Classical Studies Annual Meeting (Chicago, US)
When a Text Becomes a Book: Theoretical Reflections on Paratextuality (Berlin, Germany)
Central to the argument are the white spaces that divide the text into separate units, and the ma... more Central to the argument are the white spaces that divide the text into separate units, and the marginal annotations with which authors surrounded their own texts. The paper demonstrates how these details shed light on the works’ transition from manuscript to print. It further shows how subsequent printed editions altered these paratextual aspects. Finally, I argue that it is possible to identify shifts in attitude towards respective letter collections on the basis of these findings.
Philologie sur-mesure : Approches de la stratigraphie du texte et du document médiéval (Liège, Belgium)
Cette intervention discute l'autographe de l'Hesperis par Basinio da Parma et plus spécifiquement... more Cette intervention discute l'autographe de l'Hesperis par Basinio da Parma et plus spécifiquement des paratextes qui distinguent ce témoin textuel de tous les autres. J'analyse les citations en grec qui figurent dans les marges en identifiant leurs sources et en proposant une explication à leur apparence. Ensuite, je considère les nota-monogrammes qui attirent notre attention sur des passages spécifiques.
[ENG: This paper discusses the autograph of Basinio da Parma's Hesperis. More specifically, it looks at the paratexts that distinguish this textual witness from all the others. I analyse the citations in Greek which occur in the margins by identifying their sources and suggesting an explanation for their appearance. Consequently, I look at the nota-monograms which draw our attention to certain passages.]
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Current projects by Simon Smets
Articles by Simon Smets
This article discusses the various facets of love found in Marsilio Ficino’s epistolary collection. We demonstrate that the appearance of love in Ficino’s letters can be roughly divided into three stages, which coincide with the ascent from interpersonal love between a philosopher and his pupil to societal engagement to a contemplation of the divine and cosmic unity. We argue that, in this respect, the Florentine philosopher’s letter collection complemented and developed the themes discussed in his other writings, including, above all, De amore and De vita.
Encyclopedia Entries by Simon Smets
Book Reviews by Simon Smets
Conference Papers by Simon Smets
[ENG: This paper discusses the autograph of Basinio da Parma's Hesperis. More specifically, it looks at the paratexts that distinguish this textual witness from all the others. I analyse the citations in Greek which occur in the margins by identifying their sources and suggesting an explanation for their appearance. Consequently, I look at the nota-monograms which draw our attention to certain passages.]
This article discusses the various facets of love found in Marsilio Ficino’s epistolary collection. We demonstrate that the appearance of love in Ficino’s letters can be roughly divided into three stages, which coincide with the ascent from interpersonal love between a philosopher and his pupil to societal engagement to a contemplation of the divine and cosmic unity. We argue that, in this respect, the Florentine philosopher’s letter collection complemented and developed the themes discussed in his other writings, including, above all, De amore and De vita.
[ENG: This paper discusses the autograph of Basinio da Parma's Hesperis. More specifically, it looks at the paratexts that distinguish this textual witness from all the others. I analyse the citations in Greek which occur in the margins by identifying their sources and suggesting an explanation for their appearance. Consequently, I look at the nota-monograms which draw our attention to certain passages.]
Rimini (Museo della Città, Sala del Giudizio and Palazzo Buonadrata), 14-16 mai 2020
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DESCRIPTION
By the middle of the fifteenth century Rimini had become a major center of Italian humanism. The cultural patronage of the famous condottiere Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta (1417–1468), attracted numerous artists, writers, and scholars, who came to the city and created works for which Rimini is still widely known today. In spite of recently intensified research on this topic, various questions about the philosophical, literary and artistic output of this circle remain open. In particular, the historiography of Rimini itself leaves considerable room for new exploration, and this despite recent work on the architecture and pictural arts of the quattrocento city. In the philosophical and literary sphere, for example, the Aristotelian-Platonic milieu around Sigismondo has not yet received in depth study, and Valturio’s imaginative tract De Re Militari still awaits a modern edition or commentary.
One of the authors who has received attention, and whose profile underlines the importance of the Renaissance in Rimini is the poet Basinio da Parma. Basinio was a prolific author in many literary genres: His mythological poem Meleagris provides a modernised version of the Calydonian pigsticking; his didactic poem Astronomica studies the stars and the zodiac; while the Liber Isottaeus is an epistolary novel in elegiac couplets about the love between Sigismondo and Isotta degli Atti.
An ongoing project at the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute of Neo-Latin Studies in Innsbruck (Austria), funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), is currently working towards a digital edition of his epic poem Hesperis, along with with a commentary and English translation. This poem was Basinio’s masterpiece and can only be understood against the wider backdrop of humanism in fifteenth century Northern Italy, and Rimini in particular. Not only do considerable historical and biographical details appear in the poem, the piece also reflects and discusses the most important cultural and literary debates of its time: philosophy, philology and education, art history and architecture etc.
The conference L’amore, le armi, le stelle intends to contextualize Basinio’s works and those of other humanists and artists within a broader framework. We invite interested speakers to propose conference papers of approx. 30 minutes with a focus on one of the following suggested (by no means exclusive) topics:
The historiography of the Malatestian court and its interaction with contemporary cultural dynamics, more specifically with Basinio;
The literary culture of Rimini: inter- and intratextuality in Basinio’s oeuvre, its narrative strategies and links with the vernacular tradition;
The sculptural and pictorial arts, architecture of the Renaissance city, and manuscript illuminations within the wider context of northern Italian scriptoria;
Philosophical trends in Rimini and northern Italy;
Greek influences and the reflection of knowledge of this language, especially in Basinio’s Hesperis;
Intermediality in Basinio’s Hesperis as a reflection of Rimini’s artistic and architectural culture;
The reception of Basinio in his time and later periods;
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Proposals (max. 250 words) are welcome before 4th November 2019.
Anna Chisena: [email protected]
Simon Smets: [email protected]
Florian Schaffenrath: [email protected]
Venue: Rimini (Museo della Città, Sala del Giudizio and Palazzo Buonadrata)
Date: 14–16 May 2020
Languages: English, Italian
Key note speaker: John Monfasani (University at Albany, State University of New York)
Travel and hotel costs will be covered for all speakers.
We plan to publish the papers after the conference in a peer-reviewed volume.