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Document Details : Title: Poets in Dialogue Subtitle: Literary Communication and Authorial (Self-)Characterisation in Humanist Liminary Poetry Author(s): SPIELHOFER, Lukas Journal: Humanistica Lovaniensia Volume: 73 Date: 2024 Pages: 179-209 DOI: 10.2143/HLO.73.0.3294197 Abstract : This paper examines a type of humanist poetry that gained immense popularity during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: liminary book epigrams. These short compositions, written either by the authors themselves or by their colleagues, accompanied most literary publications. At the threshold (limen) of the book, they introduce readers to the work at hand and communicate ideas about it and its author. Such poems are noteworthy for their (meta-)poetic quality and richness of allusion, adapting strategies of occasional poetry and drawing on content from Graeco-Roman antiquity as well as contemporary discourses – thereby demonstrating the learned play between humanists and their peers. In my study, I consider these texts primarily in regard to their literary potential as a means of authorial characterisation: through an analysis of liminary poetry taken from the Gallus pugnans, a satirical work by Swiss humanist Joachim Vadianus published 1514 in Vienna, I explore how images evoked by an author’s own introductory epigrams relate to the pictures painted in other carmina liminaria written by fellow poets on the occasion of publication. As will be shown, reading different epigrams of this edition together can essentially be thought of as a non-linear expression of poets in conversation. Moreover, the presentation and arrangement of these texts constitutes an act of authorial characterisation (or even self-fashioning) by the hands of the author or editor. |
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