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rushthatspeaksThe unofficial theme of the last two days is 'trying to get all the relevant information to fit in the subject line'.
A note: one of the authors is my roommate.
So this is a book that will be profoundly, life-savingly, devastatingly useful to about ten people in the world, and quite useful to some others, and interesting to a wider selection, and completely irrelevant to the world at large. I fall into the 'quite useful' category, although I am using it as background research for my novel and not for anything academic.
If you are studying intellectual history, it is important to know what books were available at what points in time. If the specific thinker you are interested in did not have access to a work, or did not have access to it in a relevant language, or had access to it only in manuscript, it makes a big difference. The Catalogus Translationem et Commentariorum is attempting to go through all the significant ancient authors and list all editions, printings, commentaries, known manuscripts, translations, excerpts, citations, etc.; but they've been going since 1945 and have produced eight volumes, which is not nearly comprehensive as of yet.
Therefore this, which is focused on the great ancient philosophers and their availability in the Renaissance. It gives the date of the first print edition, the date of translation into Latin, the dates of relevant translations into vernacular and their print editions, and occasionally other useful bibliographical data (it will usually let you know when something was widely circulated in manuscript).
Now, I have a novel with a chunk set in Florence in 1508, so this is useful to me, but I also find it interesting. For example, Marcus Aurelius? Almost unknown in the Renaissance. Survived in only two Greek manuscripts. Translated into English before translation into any other vernacular, which is really weird, and that English not till well into the 1600s. His place in the canon did not come till later. But Diogenes Laertius? Incredibly omnipresent, incredibly reprinted, cited, read, etc. etc., and the major source on biographical data for ancient author after ancient author. Nowadays, not so much.
Or the entire system of commentaries and summaries, which has basically gone by the wayside. The number of works mentioned which are things along the lines of an early Latin commentary on Aristotle translated into the Italian from a single Hebrew print copy picked up by the translator on a trip to Constantinople... we simply do not value commentary this way anymore. Especially now that textual emendation and correction are not participatory exercises for the reading public.
Also, without Marsilio Ficino I swear the history of Europe would be entirely different. The list of things he translated, edited, had printed, corrected, collated, wrote commentaries on, dug out of basements and was generally responsible for is ridiculous. Before him, the only Plato available in Latin was the first half of the Timaeus. After him, the entirety of Plato and vast stretches of ancient commentary on Plato and just about everything we have to this day of the neo-Platonists and neo-Pythagoreans. Did he ever sleep?
Oh, and the various pseudo-Platos, pseudo-Aristotles, pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagites and so on are also covered, along with discussion of when people began to doubt their authenticity, which was almost uniformly after the Renaissance. The Renaissance did not as yet even see the point of differentiating Seneca the Elder (rhetorician) from Seneca the Younger (tragedian).
And I will always love the various Humanist names, there was a translator actually named Hieronymous Wolf, I couldn't get away with that in a fantasy novel as it would be insufficiently realistic.
Therefore I loved this. If it should happen that you are one of the people to whom it would be desperately vital, be aware that it was put out by one of those terrifyingly confusing Italian academic presses, and therefore the best way (or possibly only way) to get hold of it would be through one of the authors (i.e. PM or email me and I'll tell her). Unless you are better than we are at confusing Italian academic presses, in which case please tell us how you manage to get hold of it so we can a) do the same and b) tell others to do likewise. But seriously, the reaction of the Italian press to being informed that if the book were given a barcode, it could be sold on Amazon, was 'but why would anyone want to do that?', so I have no particular faith.
A note: one of the authors is my roommate.
So this is a book that will be profoundly, life-savingly, devastatingly useful to about ten people in the world, and quite useful to some others, and interesting to a wider selection, and completely irrelevant to the world at large. I fall into the 'quite useful' category, although I am using it as background research for my novel and not for anything academic.
If you are studying intellectual history, it is important to know what books were available at what points in time. If the specific thinker you are interested in did not have access to a work, or did not have access to it in a relevant language, or had access to it only in manuscript, it makes a big difference. The Catalogus Translationem et Commentariorum is attempting to go through all the significant ancient authors and list all editions, printings, commentaries, known manuscripts, translations, excerpts, citations, etc.; but they've been going since 1945 and have produced eight volumes, which is not nearly comprehensive as of yet.
Therefore this, which is focused on the great ancient philosophers and their availability in the Renaissance. It gives the date of the first print edition, the date of translation into Latin, the dates of relevant translations into vernacular and their print editions, and occasionally other useful bibliographical data (it will usually let you know when something was widely circulated in manuscript).
Now, I have a novel with a chunk set in Florence in 1508, so this is useful to me, but I also find it interesting. For example, Marcus Aurelius? Almost unknown in the Renaissance. Survived in only two Greek manuscripts. Translated into English before translation into any other vernacular, which is really weird, and that English not till well into the 1600s. His place in the canon did not come till later. But Diogenes Laertius? Incredibly omnipresent, incredibly reprinted, cited, read, etc. etc., and the major source on biographical data for ancient author after ancient author. Nowadays, not so much.
Or the entire system of commentaries and summaries, which has basically gone by the wayside. The number of works mentioned which are things along the lines of an early Latin commentary on Aristotle translated into the Italian from a single Hebrew print copy picked up by the translator on a trip to Constantinople... we simply do not value commentary this way anymore. Especially now that textual emendation and correction are not participatory exercises for the reading public.
Also, without Marsilio Ficino I swear the history of Europe would be entirely different. The list of things he translated, edited, had printed, corrected, collated, wrote commentaries on, dug out of basements and was generally responsible for is ridiculous. Before him, the only Plato available in Latin was the first half of the Timaeus. After him, the entirety of Plato and vast stretches of ancient commentary on Plato and just about everything we have to this day of the neo-Platonists and neo-Pythagoreans. Did he ever sleep?
Oh, and the various pseudo-Platos, pseudo-Aristotles, pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagites and so on are also covered, along with discussion of when people began to doubt their authenticity, which was almost uniformly after the Renaissance. The Renaissance did not as yet even see the point of differentiating Seneca the Elder (rhetorician) from Seneca the Younger (tragedian).
And I will always love the various Humanist names, there was a translator actually named Hieronymous Wolf, I couldn't get away with that in a fantasy novel as it would be insufficiently realistic.
Therefore I loved this. If it should happen that you are one of the people to whom it would be desperately vital, be aware that it was put out by one of those terrifyingly confusing Italian academic presses, and therefore the best way (or possibly only way) to get hold of it would be through one of the authors (i.e. PM or email me and I'll tell her). Unless you are better than we are at confusing Italian academic presses, in which case please tell us how you manage to get hold of it so we can a) do the same and b) tell others to do likewise. But seriously, the reaction of the Italian press to being informed that if the book were given a barcode, it could be sold on Amazon, was 'but why would anyone want to do that?', so I have no particular faith.
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no subject
Date: 2011-01-06 02:30 pm (UTC)LOL *facepalm*
Oh, wait, is there a section on Catullus?
no subject
Date: 2011-01-06 05:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-06 05:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-06 01:38 pm (UTC)It seems to me that the Catalogus should be online -- and it wouldn't hurt to be a Wiki, because it could benefit from distributed processing, only with an editor, obviously.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-06 04:05 pm (UTC)No doubt there's slash for both pairings.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-06 06:11 pm (UTC)You should name-drop him into your novel just to see if anyone notices.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-06 06:31 pm (UTC)Ahem. I mean, I really want a copy of this book. I should check the library, and maybe inter-library loan would help me out.
P.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-07 04:36 am (UTC)It seems there are a number of ways that people can get hold of this book.
There are a few used copies on abebooks.com
http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?bi=0&bx=off&ds=30&sortby=2&sts=t&x=79&y=15&cm_ven=PFX&cm_cat=affiliates&cm_pla=links&afn_sr=gan&cm_ite=k318564&isbn=8822257693&pfxid=a_1288071585
The publisher, Leo S. Olschki, allows direct orders, although I wouldn't trust their online credit card page, since it seems not to use encryption. But there are other forms of payment available, or phoning the credit card number in might be an option.
order page: http://www.olschki.it/page.htm
book page: http://www.olschki.it/cgi-bin/olscq2.pl?num=1852&lang=eng
A major online book store in Italy IBS.it () (Internet Book Shop) has it available.
I've been using Google Translate to browse the site. I'm quite happy with the search engine plugin (http://mycroft.mozdev.org/search-engines.html?name=google+translate+detect+en+url) to my Firefox browser that lets me copy a URL into it, then see the page translated into English no matter what the starting language.
Here are some links, using Google Translate, but if you'd rather see it in the original Italian, there should be a link to the original at the top.
book page:http://www.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ibs.it%2Fcode%2F9788822257697%2Fhankins-james-palmer-ada%2Frecovery-of-ancient-philosophy.html&hl=en&ie=UTF8&sl=auto&tl=en
shipping page: http://www.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ibs.it%2Fhlp%2Fhlppge.asp&hl=en&ie=UTF8&sl=auto&tl=en
The shipping page says that the store ships worldwide, and gives rates for the USA and Canada, so if wanting to purchase a new copy, or if used ones aren't available (right now there's only two listed), then IBS.it might be a good bet. It says it usually ships in 3 weeks.
Amazon.it (http://www.amazon.it) seems to have it listed, but says it is currently unavailable.
book link: http://www.amazon.it/recovery-Ancient-Philosophy-Renaissance-Quaderni/dp/8822257693
There are a few other online book stores based in Italy that seem to have it, and are willing to ship to North America:
Bol.it (http://www.bol.it) ships in 3-5 days
book page: http://www.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bol.it%2Flibri%2FThe-recovery-of-Ancient%2FJames-Hankins-Ada-Palmer%2Fea978882225769%2F&hl=en&ie=UTF8&sl=auto&tl=en
La Feltrinelli (http://www.lafeltrinelli.it) ships in 14 days
book page: http://www.lafeltrinelli.it/products/9788822257697/The_recovery_of_Ancient_Philosophy_in_the_Renaissance%3A_A_Brief_Guide/James_Hankins.html?prkw=The%20recovery%20of%20Ancient%20Philosophy%20in%20the%20Renaissance&srch=0&Cerca.x=64&Cerca.y=9&cat1=1&prm=
shipping page:http://www.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.lafeltrinelli.it%2Ffcom%2Fit%2Fhome%2Fpages%2Finfoutili%2Fassistenza%2FSpedizioni-Estero.html%23Faq0&hl=en&ie=UTF8&sl=auto&tl=en
Libreria Universitaria (http://www.libreriauniversitaria.it) ships in 2-3 days
book page: http://www.libreriauniversitaria.it/recovery-ancient-philosophy-renaissance-brief/libro/9788822257697
Also, if you live in or near a major city, there might be a book store that specializes in books published in Italy that could order it in. Actually, any independent book store might be able to order it in, given that it has an ISBN.
ISBN-10: 8822257693
ISBN-13: 978-8822257697
no subject
Date: 2011-01-07 04:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-07 05:13 am (UTC)I've tracked down obscure books before, though none from Italy thus far. I'm tempted to order this one.
Mostly I succeed at finding what I'm looking for, but occasionally one gets away, such as the one recently where even contacting the author didn't help.
I think sheet music by Japanese composer Yoko Kanno was the first purchase I made on a website where I didn't understand the language. That was Amazon.co.jp. I've also gone to French websites, but I do understand French to some extent, and it shares a character set with English, so it wasn't nearly as daunting.
I'm very impressed with modern internet translation tools. My favourite so far is Google Translate. 10 years ago, I would have had to ask a friend who spoke the language, or laboriously used dictionaries or Babelfish to figure out enough to complete a simple transaction. And there were fewer online book stores. 10 years before that, it would have been much harder to even know that the book existed, to be able to ask for it in a brick-and-mortar store.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-07 07:22 am (UTC)wow. an impressive display of googlefu to be sure. bravo.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-08 12:16 am (UTC)