Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-lj6df Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T03:18:07.607Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 2 - The Secret History of Plutarch (and the History of Pseudo-Plutarch) and a Brief Account of Reception in Renaissance Italy

from Part I - Setting the Stage

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 September 2022

Rebecca Kingston
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
Get access

Summary

Chapter 2 is a prelude to the main account of reception but offers some analysis of the first great reference to Plutarch in the post-classical world in John of Salisbury’s Policraticus (c. 1159). Despite the apocryphal nature of John’s Plutarch, the association of Plutarch as tutor to the Emperor Trajan was a trope which provided greater weight to the authority of his writing in the subsequent history of political thought. In the latter part of this chapter, I give a brief synopsis of a few essays (“On Homer” and “On the Education of Children”) which are now deemed apocryphal but which for many early modern scholars formed a legitimate part of Plutarch’s corpus. I discuss how we should consider these texts in the context of a history of Plutarch reception. I also discuss briefly the development of scholarship on Plutarch in early Renaissance Italy.

Type
Chapter
Information
Plutarch's Prism
Classical Reception and Public Humanism in France and England, 1500–1800
, pp. 65 - 92
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×