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IMC 2008: Sessions

Session 707: Renaissance Medievalism: Dante, Dürer, Deloney

Tuesday 8 July 2008, 14.15-15.45

Sponsor:St Andrews' Institute of Mediaeval Studies, University of St Andrews
Organiser:Bettina Bildhauer, School of Modern Languages - German, University of St Andrews
Moderator/Chair:Bettina Bildhauer, School of Modern Languages - German, University of St Andrews
Paper 707-aReforming Dante: Reading the Comedy in the Renaissance
(Language: English)
Claudia Rossignoli, School of Modern Languages - Italian, University of St Andrews
Index terms: Language and Literature - Italian, Manuscripts and Palaeography, Medievalism and Antiquarianism, Theology
Paper 707-bThe Craftsman and the Artist: Albrecht Dürer on the Cusp of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance
(Language: English)
Jeffrey Ashcroft, Department of German, University of St Andrews
Index terms: Art History - General, Historiography - Medieval, Language and Literature - German, Medievalism and Antiquarianism
Paper 707-cThe Medieval in the Early Modern: Thomas Deloney's The Gentle Craft
(Language: English)
Alex Davis, School of English, University of St Andrews
Index terms: Hagiography, Historiography - Medieval, Language and Literature - Middle English, Medievalism and Antiquarianism
Abstract

This session concerns itself with 16th-century attitudes to the Middle Ages in case studies from three different countries. Rossignoli discusses the literary and a doctrinal re-interpretation of Dante in Renaissance commentaries and readings, which emphasized the unorthodox aspects of the Comedy, as opposed to its essentially medieval design. Davis studies a collection of narratives about the early history of the shoemakers' trade (among them the life of St Winifred) as an example of a serious 16th-century treatment of the early Middle Ages that is not, however, founded on a concept of historical difference. Ashcroft assesses Dürer's awareness, and expression in his writings, of the transformation of concepts of art and the artist between 1490 and 1528 and the problematics of pioneering a Northern Renaissance.