Author: Neil Kenny
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191068861
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 305
Book Description
In what tense should we refer to the dead? The question has long been asked, from Cicero to Julian Barnes. Answering it is partly a matter of grammar and stylistic convention. But the hesitation, annoyance, and even distress that can be caused by the "wrong" tense suggests that more may be at stake—our very relation to the dead. This book, the first to test that hypothesis, investigates how tenses were used in sixteenth and early seventeenth-century France (especially in French but also in Latin) to refer to dead friends, lovers, family members, enemies, colleagues, writers, officials, kings and queens of recent times, and also to those who had died long before, whether Christ, the saints, or the ancient Greeks and Romans who posthumously filled the minds of Renaissance humanists. Did tenses refer to the dead in ways that contributed to granting them differing degrees of presence (and absence)? Did tenses communicate dimensions of posthumous presence (and absence) that partly eluded more concept-based affirmations? The investigation ranges from funerary and devotional writing to Eucharistic theology, from poetry to humanist paratexts, from Rabelais's prose fiction to Montaigne's Essais. Primarily a work of literary and cultural history, it also draws on early modern grammatical thought and on modern linguistics (with its concept of aspect and its questioning of "tense"), while arguing that neither can fully explain the phenomena studied. The book briefly compares early modern usage with tendencies in modern French and English in the West, asking whether changes in belief about posthumous survival have been accompanied by changes in tense-use.
Death and Tenses
Author: Neil Kenny
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191068861
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 305
Book Description
In what tense should we refer to the dead? The question has long been asked, from Cicero to Julian Barnes. Answering it is partly a matter of grammar and stylistic convention. But the hesitation, annoyance, and even distress that can be caused by the "wrong" tense suggests that more may be at stake—our very relation to the dead. This book, the first to test that hypothesis, investigates how tenses were used in sixteenth and early seventeenth-century France (especially in French but also in Latin) to refer to dead friends, lovers, family members, enemies, colleagues, writers, officials, kings and queens of recent times, and also to those who had died long before, whether Christ, the saints, or the ancient Greeks and Romans who posthumously filled the minds of Renaissance humanists. Did tenses refer to the dead in ways that contributed to granting them differing degrees of presence (and absence)? Did tenses communicate dimensions of posthumous presence (and absence) that partly eluded more concept-based affirmations? The investigation ranges from funerary and devotional writing to Eucharistic theology, from poetry to humanist paratexts, from Rabelais's prose fiction to Montaigne's Essais. Primarily a work of literary and cultural history, it also draws on early modern grammatical thought and on modern linguistics (with its concept of aspect and its questioning of "tense"), while arguing that neither can fully explain the phenomena studied. The book briefly compares early modern usage with tendencies in modern French and English in the West, asking whether changes in belief about posthumous survival have been accompanied by changes in tense-use.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191068861
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 305
Book Description
In what tense should we refer to the dead? The question has long been asked, from Cicero to Julian Barnes. Answering it is partly a matter of grammar and stylistic convention. But the hesitation, annoyance, and even distress that can be caused by the "wrong" tense suggests that more may be at stake—our very relation to the dead. This book, the first to test that hypothesis, investigates how tenses were used in sixteenth and early seventeenth-century France (especially in French but also in Latin) to refer to dead friends, lovers, family members, enemies, colleagues, writers, officials, kings and queens of recent times, and also to those who had died long before, whether Christ, the saints, or the ancient Greeks and Romans who posthumously filled the minds of Renaissance humanists. Did tenses refer to the dead in ways that contributed to granting them differing degrees of presence (and absence)? Did tenses communicate dimensions of posthumous presence (and absence) that partly eluded more concept-based affirmations? The investigation ranges from funerary and devotional writing to Eucharistic theology, from poetry to humanist paratexts, from Rabelais's prose fiction to Montaigne's Essais. Primarily a work of literary and cultural history, it also draws on early modern grammatical thought and on modern linguistics (with its concept of aspect and its questioning of "tense"), while arguing that neither can fully explain the phenomena studied. The book briefly compares early modern usage with tendencies in modern French and English in the West, asking whether changes in belief about posthumous survival have been accompanied by changes in tense-use.
Festive Funerals in Early Modern Italy
Author: Minou Schraven
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351567071
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 339
Book Description
Celebrated at the heart of a notoriously unstable period, the Vacant See, papal funerals in early modern Rome easily fell prey to ceremonial chaos and disorder. Charged with maintaining decorum, papal Masters of Ceremonies supervised all aspects of the funeral, from the correct handling of the papal body to the construction of the funeral apparato: the temporary decorations used during the funeral masses in St Peter?s. The visual and liturgical centre of this apparato was the chapelle ardente or castrum doloris: a baldachin-like structure standing over the body of the deceased, decorated with coats of arms, precious textiles and hundreds of burning candles. Drawing from printed festival books and previously unpublished sources, such as ceremonial diaries and diplomatic correspondence, this book offers the first comprehensive overview of the development of early modern funeral apparati. What was their function in funeral liturgy and early modern festival culture at large? How did the papal funeral apparati compare to those of cardinals, the Spanish and French monarchy, and the Medici court in Florence? And most importantly, how did contemporaries perceive and judge them? By the late sixteenth century, new trends in conspicuous commemoration had rendered the traditional papal funeral apparati in St Peter?s obsolete. The author shows how papal families wishing to honor their uncles according to the new standards needed to invent ceremonial opportunities from scratch, showing off dynastic resilience, while modelling the deceased?s memoria after carefully constructed ideals of post-Tridentine sainthood.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351567071
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 339
Book Description
Celebrated at the heart of a notoriously unstable period, the Vacant See, papal funerals in early modern Rome easily fell prey to ceremonial chaos and disorder. Charged with maintaining decorum, papal Masters of Ceremonies supervised all aspects of the funeral, from the correct handling of the papal body to the construction of the funeral apparato: the temporary decorations used during the funeral masses in St Peter?s. The visual and liturgical centre of this apparato was the chapelle ardente or castrum doloris: a baldachin-like structure standing over the body of the deceased, decorated with coats of arms, precious textiles and hundreds of burning candles. Drawing from printed festival books and previously unpublished sources, such as ceremonial diaries and diplomatic correspondence, this book offers the first comprehensive overview of the development of early modern funeral apparati. What was their function in funeral liturgy and early modern festival culture at large? How did the papal funeral apparati compare to those of cardinals, the Spanish and French monarchy, and the Medici court in Florence? And most importantly, how did contemporaries perceive and judge them? By the late sixteenth century, new trends in conspicuous commemoration had rendered the traditional papal funeral apparati in St Peter?s obsolete. The author shows how papal families wishing to honor their uncles according to the new standards needed to invent ceremonial opportunities from scratch, showing off dynastic resilience, while modelling the deceased?s memoria after carefully constructed ideals of post-Tridentine sainthood.
The Sacralization of Space and Behavior in the Early Modern World
Author: Jennifer Mara DeSilva
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317016785
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 345
Book Description
In the Early Modern period - as both reformed and Catholic churches strove to articulate orthodox belief and conduct through texts, sermons, rituals, and images - communities grappled frequently with the connection between sacred space and behavior. The Sacralization of Space and Behavior in the Early Modern World explores individual and community involvement in the approbation, reconfiguration and regulation of sacred spaces and the behavior (both animal and human) within them. The individual’s understanding of sacred space, and consequently the behavior appropriate within it, depended on local need, group dynamics, and the dissemination of normative expectations. While these expectations were defined in a growing body of confessionalizing literature, locally and internationally traditional clerical authorities found their decisions contested, circumvented, or elaborated in order to make room for other stakeholders’ activities and needs. To clearly reveal the efforts of early modern groups to negotiate authority and the transformation of behavior with sacred space, this collection presents examples that allow the deconstruction of these tensions and the exploration of the resulting campaigns within sacred space. Based on new archival research the eleven chapters in this collection examine diverse aspects of the campaigns to transform Christian behavior within a variety of types of sacred space and through a spectrum of media. These essays give voice to the arguments, exhortations, and accusations that surrounded the activities taking place in early modern sacred space and reveal much about how people made sense of these transformations.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317016785
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 345
Book Description
In the Early Modern period - as both reformed and Catholic churches strove to articulate orthodox belief and conduct through texts, sermons, rituals, and images - communities grappled frequently with the connection between sacred space and behavior. The Sacralization of Space and Behavior in the Early Modern World explores individual and community involvement in the approbation, reconfiguration and regulation of sacred spaces and the behavior (both animal and human) within them. The individual’s understanding of sacred space, and consequently the behavior appropriate within it, depended on local need, group dynamics, and the dissemination of normative expectations. While these expectations were defined in a growing body of confessionalizing literature, locally and internationally traditional clerical authorities found their decisions contested, circumvented, or elaborated in order to make room for other stakeholders’ activities and needs. To clearly reveal the efforts of early modern groups to negotiate authority and the transformation of behavior with sacred space, this collection presents examples that allow the deconstruction of these tensions and the exploration of the resulting campaigns within sacred space. Based on new archival research the eleven chapters in this collection examine diverse aspects of the campaigns to transform Christian behavior within a variety of types of sacred space and through a spectrum of media. These essays give voice to the arguments, exhortations, and accusations that surrounded the activities taking place in early modern sacred space and reveal much about how people made sense of these transformations.
Aspiration, Representation and Memory
Author: Jessica Munns
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317178025
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 350
Book Description
Exploiting the turbulence and strife of sixteenth-century France, the House of Guise arose from a provincial power base to establish themselves as dominant political players in France and indeed Europe, marrying within royal and princely circles and occupying the most important ecclesiastical and military positions. Propelled by ambitions derived from their position as cadets of a minor sovereign house, they represent a cadre of early modern elites who are difficult to categorise neatly: neither fully sovereign princes nor fully subject nobility. They might have spent most of their time in one state, France, but their interests were always ’trans-national’; contested spaces far from the major centres of monarchical power - from the Ardennes to the Italian peninsula - were frequent theatres of activity for semi-sovereign border families such as the Lorraine-Guise. This nexus of activity, and the interplay between princely status and representation, is the subject of this book. The essays in this collection approach Guise aims, ambitions and self-fashioning using this ’trans-national’ dimension as context: their desire for increased royal (rather than merely princely) power and prestige, and the use of representation (visual and literary) in order to achieve it. Guise claims to thrones and territories from Jerusalem to Naples are explored, alongside the Guise ’dream of Italy’, with in-depth studies of Henry of Lorraine, fifth Duke of Guise, and his attempts in the mid-seventeenth century to gain a throne in Naples. The combination of the violence and drama of their lives at the centres of European power and their adroit use of publicity ensured that versions of their strongly delineated images were appropriated by chroniclers, playwrights and artists, in which they sometimes featured as they would have wished, as heroes and heroines, frequently as villains, and ultimately as characters in the narratives of national heritage.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317178025
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 350
Book Description
Exploiting the turbulence and strife of sixteenth-century France, the House of Guise arose from a provincial power base to establish themselves as dominant political players in France and indeed Europe, marrying within royal and princely circles and occupying the most important ecclesiastical and military positions. Propelled by ambitions derived from their position as cadets of a minor sovereign house, they represent a cadre of early modern elites who are difficult to categorise neatly: neither fully sovereign princes nor fully subject nobility. They might have spent most of their time in one state, France, but their interests were always ’trans-national’; contested spaces far from the major centres of monarchical power - from the Ardennes to the Italian peninsula - were frequent theatres of activity for semi-sovereign border families such as the Lorraine-Guise. This nexus of activity, and the interplay between princely status and representation, is the subject of this book. The essays in this collection approach Guise aims, ambitions and self-fashioning using this ’trans-national’ dimension as context: their desire for increased royal (rather than merely princely) power and prestige, and the use of representation (visual and literary) in order to achieve it. Guise claims to thrones and territories from Jerusalem to Naples are explored, alongside the Guise ’dream of Italy’, with in-depth studies of Henry of Lorraine, fifth Duke of Guise, and his attempts in the mid-seventeenth century to gain a throne in Naples. The combination of the violence and drama of their lives at the centres of European power and their adroit use of publicity ensured that versions of their strongly delineated images were appropriated by chroniclers, playwrights and artists, in which they sometimes featured as they would have wished, as heroes and heroines, frequently as villains, and ultimately as characters in the narratives of national heritage.
Teaching the Reformation
Author: Amy Nelson Burnett
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190294205
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 460
Book Description
Though the Reformation was sparked by the actions of Martn Luther, it was not a decisive break from the Church in Rome but rather a gradual process of religious and social change. As the men responsible for religious instruction and moral oversight at the village level, parish pastors played a key role in the implementation of the Reformation and the gradual development of a Protestant religious culture, but their ministry has seldom been examined in the light of how they were prepared for the pastorate. Teaching the Reformation examines the four generations of Reformed pastors who served the church of Basel in the century after the Reformation, focusing on the evolution of pastoral training and Reformed theology, the theory and practice of preaching, and the performance of pastoral care in both urban and rural parishes. It looks at how these pastors were educated and what they learned, examining not only the study of theology but also the general education in languages, rhetoric and dialectic that future pastors received at the citys Latin school and in the arts faculty of the university. It points to significant changes over time in the content of that education, which in turn separated Basels pastors into distinct generations. The study also looks more specifically at preaching in Basel, demonstrating how the evolution of dialectic and rhetoric instruction, and particularly the spread of Ramism, led to changes in both exegetical method and homiletics. These developments, combined with the gradual elaboration of Reformed theology, resulted in a distinctive style of Reformed Orthodox preaching in Basel. The development of pastoral education also had a direct impact on how Basels clergy carried out their other dutiescatechization, administering the sacraments, counseling the dying and consoling the bereaved, and overseeing the moral conduct of their parishioners. The growing professionalization of the clergy, the result of more intensive education and more stringent supervision, contributed to the gradual implantation of a Reformed religious culture in Basel.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190294205
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 460
Book Description
Though the Reformation was sparked by the actions of Martn Luther, it was not a decisive break from the Church in Rome but rather a gradual process of religious and social change. As the men responsible for religious instruction and moral oversight at the village level, parish pastors played a key role in the implementation of the Reformation and the gradual development of a Protestant religious culture, but their ministry has seldom been examined in the light of how they were prepared for the pastorate. Teaching the Reformation examines the four generations of Reformed pastors who served the church of Basel in the century after the Reformation, focusing on the evolution of pastoral training and Reformed theology, the theory and practice of preaching, and the performance of pastoral care in both urban and rural parishes. It looks at how these pastors were educated and what they learned, examining not only the study of theology but also the general education in languages, rhetoric and dialectic that future pastors received at the citys Latin school and in the arts faculty of the university. It points to significant changes over time in the content of that education, which in turn separated Basels pastors into distinct generations. The study also looks more specifically at preaching in Basel, demonstrating how the evolution of dialectic and rhetoric instruction, and particularly the spread of Ramism, led to changes in both exegetical method and homiletics. These developments, combined with the gradual elaboration of Reformed theology, resulted in a distinctive style of Reformed Orthodox preaching in Basel. The development of pastoral education also had a direct impact on how Basels clergy carried out their other dutiescatechization, administering the sacraments, counseling the dying and consoling the bereaved, and overseeing the moral conduct of their parishioners. The growing professionalization of the clergy, the result of more intensive education and more stringent supervision, contributed to the gradual implantation of a Reformed religious culture in Basel.
A Companion to Death, Burial, and Remembrance in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, c. 1300–1700
Author: Philip Booth
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004443436
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 529
Book Description
This companion volume seeks to trace the development of ideas relating to death, burial, and the remembrance of the dead in Europe between ca. 1300 and 1700. Examining attitudes to death from a range of disciplinary perspectives, it synthesises current trends in scholarship, challenging the old view that the Black Death and the Protestant Reformations fundamentally altered ideas about death. Instead, it shows how people prepared for death; how death and dying were imagined in art and literature; and how practices and beliefs appeared, disappeared, changed, or strengthened over time as different regions and communities reacted to the changing world around them. Overall, it serves as an indispensable introduction to the subject of death, burial, and commemoration in thirteenth to eighteenth century Europe. Contributors: Ruth Atherton, Stephen Bates, Philip Booth, Zachary Chitwood, Ralph Dekoninck, Freddy C. Dominguez, Anna M. Duch, Jackie Eales, Madeleine Gray, Polina Ignatova, Robert Marcoux, Christopher Ocker, Gordon D. Raeburn, Ludwig Steindorff, Elizabeth Tingle, and Christina Welch.
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004443436
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 529
Book Description
This companion volume seeks to trace the development of ideas relating to death, burial, and the remembrance of the dead in Europe between ca. 1300 and 1700. Examining attitudes to death from a range of disciplinary perspectives, it synthesises current trends in scholarship, challenging the old view that the Black Death and the Protestant Reformations fundamentally altered ideas about death. Instead, it shows how people prepared for death; how death and dying were imagined in art and literature; and how practices and beliefs appeared, disappeared, changed, or strengthened over time as different regions and communities reacted to the changing world around them. Overall, it serves as an indispensable introduction to the subject of death, burial, and commemoration in thirteenth to eighteenth century Europe. Contributors: Ruth Atherton, Stephen Bates, Philip Booth, Zachary Chitwood, Ralph Dekoninck, Freddy C. Dominguez, Anna M. Duch, Jackie Eales, Madeleine Gray, Polina Ignatova, Robert Marcoux, Christopher Ocker, Gordon D. Raeburn, Ludwig Steindorff, Elizabeth Tingle, and Christina Welch.
Machiavelli, Islam and the East
Author: Lucio Biasiori
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319539493
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 268
Book Description
This volume provides the first survey of the unexplored connections between Machiavelli’s work and the Islamic world, running from the Arabic roots of The Prince to its first translations into Ottoman Turkish and Arabic. It investigates comparative descriptions of non-European peoples, Renaissance representations of Muḥammad and the Ottoman military discipline, a Jesuit treatise in Persian for a Mughal emperor, peculiar readers from Brazil to India, and the parallel lives of Machiavelli and the bureaucrat Celālzāde Muṣṭafá. Ten distinguished scholars analyse the backgrounds, circulation and reception of Machiavelli’s writings, focusing on many aspects of the mutual exchange of political theories and grammars between East and West. A significant contribution to attempts by current scholarship to challenge any rigid separation within Eurasia, this volume restores a sense of the global spreading of books, ideas and men in the past.
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319539493
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 268
Book Description
This volume provides the first survey of the unexplored connections between Machiavelli’s work and the Islamic world, running from the Arabic roots of The Prince to its first translations into Ottoman Turkish and Arabic. It investigates comparative descriptions of non-European peoples, Renaissance representations of Muḥammad and the Ottoman military discipline, a Jesuit treatise in Persian for a Mughal emperor, peculiar readers from Brazil to India, and the parallel lives of Machiavelli and the bureaucrat Celālzāde Muṣṭafá. Ten distinguished scholars analyse the backgrounds, circulation and reception of Machiavelli’s writings, focusing on many aspects of the mutual exchange of political theories and grammars between East and West. A significant contribution to attempts by current scholarship to challenge any rigid separation within Eurasia, this volume restores a sense of the global spreading of books, ideas and men in the past.
Animals and Courts
Author: Mark Hengerer
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110542765
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 492
Book Description
Early modern princely courts were not only inhabited by humans, but also by a large number of animals. This coexistence of non-human living beings had crucial impacts on the spatial organization, the social composition and cultural life at these courts. The contributions enrich our knowledge on another aspect of court life and invite to reconsider our basic understandings of court, courtiers and court society.
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110542765
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 492
Book Description
Early modern princely courts were not only inhabited by humans, but also by a large number of animals. This coexistence of non-human living beings had crucial impacts on the spatial organization, the social composition and cultural life at these courts. The contributions enrich our knowledge on another aspect of court life and invite to reconsider our basic understandings of court, courtiers and court society.
The Queen's Library
Author: Cynthia J. Brown
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812204905
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 415
Book Description
What do the physical characteristics of the books acquired by elite women in the late medieval and early modern periods tell us about their owners, and what in particular can their illustrations—especially their illustrations of women—reveal? Centered on Anne, duchess of Brittany and twice queen of France, with reference to her contemporaries and successors, The Queen's Library examines the cultural issues surrounding female modes of empowerment and book production. The book aims to uncover the harmonies and conflicts that surfaced in male-authored, male-illustrated works for and about women. In her interdisciplinary investigation of the cultural and political legacy of Anne of Brittany and her female contemporaries, Cynthia J. Brown argues that the verbal and visual imagery used to represent these women of influence was necessarily complex because of its inherently conflicting portrayal of power and subordination. She contends that it can be understood fully only by drawing on the intersection of pertinent literary, historical, codicological, and art historical sources. In The Queen's Library, Brown examines depictions of women of power in five spheres that tellingly expose this tension: rituals of urban and royal reception; the politics of female personification allegories; the "famous-women" topos; women in mourning; and women mourned.
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812204905
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 415
Book Description
What do the physical characteristics of the books acquired by elite women in the late medieval and early modern periods tell us about their owners, and what in particular can their illustrations—especially their illustrations of women—reveal? Centered on Anne, duchess of Brittany and twice queen of France, with reference to her contemporaries and successors, The Queen's Library examines the cultural issues surrounding female modes of empowerment and book production. The book aims to uncover the harmonies and conflicts that surfaced in male-authored, male-illustrated works for and about women. In her interdisciplinary investigation of the cultural and political legacy of Anne of Brittany and her female contemporaries, Cynthia J. Brown argues that the verbal and visual imagery used to represent these women of influence was necessarily complex because of its inherently conflicting portrayal of power and subordination. She contends that it can be understood fully only by drawing on the intersection of pertinent literary, historical, codicological, and art historical sources. In The Queen's Library, Brown examines depictions of women of power in five spheres that tellingly expose this tension: rituals of urban and royal reception; the politics of female personification allegories; the "famous-women" topos; women in mourning; and women mourned.
Thuanus
Author: Ingrid De Smet
Publisher: Librairie Droz
ISBN: 9782600010719
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 358
Book Description
The Parisian magistrate Jacques-Auguste de Thou (1553-1617) was a major figure in the French Wars of Religion (1562-1598) and their immediate aftermath. Best known for his magisterial History of his own times (covering 1546-1607), and his complementary Memoirs (covering 1553-1601), de Thou was a key political negotiator, a famous book-collector and an influential patron to scholars and writers, as well as a respected poet in his own right and a prolific correspondent. This is the first monograph on de Thou since Samuel Kinser's bibliographical study of 1966. In the course of five chapters, thematically arranged between a substantial introduction and a dramatic conclusion, Ingrid De Smet meticulously unpicks de Thou's strategies of self-fashioning and career enhancement as well as the conditions that led to his fall from grace. In doing so, this monograph not only rehabilitates de Thou as a creative (neo-Latin) writer of international allure, it also uncovers and contextualizes the complexities of de Thou's life, writings, and thought.
Publisher: Librairie Droz
ISBN: 9782600010719
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 358
Book Description
The Parisian magistrate Jacques-Auguste de Thou (1553-1617) was a major figure in the French Wars of Religion (1562-1598) and their immediate aftermath. Best known for his magisterial History of his own times (covering 1546-1607), and his complementary Memoirs (covering 1553-1601), de Thou was a key political negotiator, a famous book-collector and an influential patron to scholars and writers, as well as a respected poet in his own right and a prolific correspondent. This is the first monograph on de Thou since Samuel Kinser's bibliographical study of 1966. In the course of five chapters, thematically arranged between a substantial introduction and a dramatic conclusion, Ingrid De Smet meticulously unpicks de Thou's strategies of self-fashioning and career enhancement as well as the conditions that led to his fall from grace. In doing so, this monograph not only rehabilitates de Thou as a creative (neo-Latin) writer of international allure, it also uncovers and contextualizes the complexities of de Thou's life, writings, and thought.