Smets, Simon; (2024) Authorship and Narrative Design in Renaissance Latin Letter Collections. Marsilio Ficino and contemporaries. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

It is well-known that letters were the most popular humanist genre, on the edge between private and public life. Many authors made a careful selection from their correspondence and published it either in manuscript or print but generally with a wide audience in mind. Recent scholarship has demonstrated how the ancient and medieval forerunners of Renaissance Latin letter collections were carefully crafted compositions with strong intertextual connections. My thesis examines humanist letter collections from this point of view and shows their underlying strategies of narrative patterning and engagement with other works of literature. It considers especially their allusions to epic poetry from Vergil to Dante. The interpretation of literary macrostructures is inextricably linked with questions of authorship and reader reception, a methodological concern with which the thesis deals explicitly. I closely examine the production and reception of Ficino’s letters through extant manuscripts and the marginal annotations in around one hundred incunable copies of his Epistole. The thesis further argues that contemporary letter compilers like Angelo Poliziano recognised the structure of the Epistole and consciously parodied it. With this combined approach of textual interpretation and book historical analysis, the thesis traces the pedagogical layout of Ficino’s Epistole which guides the reader through the vitae voluptuosa and activa to a sun-drenched contemplation of the divine.

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