Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-mlc7c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-09T14:22:45.669Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Aristotle My Beloved: Poetry, Diagnosis, and the Dreamsof Julius Caesar Scaliger*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Kristine Louise Haugen
Kristine Louise Haugen*
Affiliation:
California Institute Of Technology
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Notoriously Aristotelian in his poetic theory, linguistics, and natural philosophy, Julius Caesar Scaliger (1484–1558) also reimagined the lost love poetry that Aristotle himself was said to have written. Scaliger's New Epigrams of 1533 combine a distinctively humanist view of Aristotle as an elegant polymath with a sustained experiment in refashioning the Petrarchan love lyric. Most visibly in poems about dreams and dreaming, Scaliger educes his speaker's erotic despair from philosophical problems in contemporary Aristotelian accounts of the soul, knowledge, and personal identity. The strange but compelling texts that result form a crossroads for Scaliger's own identities as physician, philosopher, and poet.

Type
Research Article
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 60 , Issue 3 , Fall 2007 , pp. 819 - 851
Copyright
Copyright © 2007 Renaissance Society of America

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.)

Footnotes

*

This essay was written during a Frances Yates Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Warburg Institute, London, where the erudite staff and magnificent library made it an immense pleasure to spend three years. Many friends have been kind enough to discuss Scaliger with me, but I am especially grateful for the saving interventions of Jill Kraye, G. W. Pigman III, and an anonymous reader for Renaissance Quarterly.

References

Magnus, Albertus . Parva naturalia. Venice, 1517.Google Scholar
Aristotle, . Historia de animalibus. Trans. and commentary Julius Caesar Scaliger. Toulouse, 1619.Google Scholar
Aristotle, . On the Soul; Parva naturalia; On Breath. Trans. W. S. Hett. Cambridge, MA, 1935.Google Scholar
Athenaeus, . The Deipnosophists. Ed. and trans. Charles Burton Gulick. 7 vols. Cambridge, MA, 1927–41.Google Scholar
Averroes, . Compendia librorum Aristotelis qui Parva naturalia vocantur. Ed. A. L. Shields. Cambridge, MA, 1949.Google Scholar
Avicenna, . A Treatise on the Canon of Medicine of Avicenna Incorporating a Translation of the First Book. Ed. O. Cameron Gruner. London, 1930.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barbaro, Ermolao. “Praefatio Hermolai Barbari, cum libros Aristotelis domi coepit praelegere.” In Angelo Poliziano, Opera omnia, sigg. s8r–t1r. Venice, 1498.Google Scholar
Barbaro, Ermolao. Epistolae, orationes et carmina. Ed. Vittore Branca. 2 vols. Florence, 1943.Google Scholar
Myriam, Billanovich. “Benedetto Bordon e Giulio Cesare Scaligero.” Italia medioevale e umanistica 11 (1968) : 187 – 256 Google Scholar
Blackwell, Constance, and Sachiko Kusukawa, eds. Philosophy in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries: Conversations with Aristotle . Aldershot, 1999.Google Scholar
Bottiglioni, Gino. La lirica latina in Firenze nella 2.a metà del secolo XV. Pisa, 1913.Google Scholar
Leicester, Bradner. “The Neo-Latin Epigram in Italy in the Fifteenth Century.” Medievalia et Humanistica 8 (1954) : 62 – 70 Google Scholar
Brandolini, Raffaele. On Music and Poetry (De musica et poetica, 1513 ). Trans. Ann Moyer. Tempe, 2001.Google Scholar
Bray, René. La formation de la doctrine classique en France. Paris, 1927.Google Scholar
Buck, August. Italienische Dichtungslehren vom Mittelalter bis zum Ausgang der Renaissance. Tübingen, 1952.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Catanzaro, Giuseppe, and Francesco Santucci, eds. Poesia umanistica latina in distici elegiaci. Assisi, 1999.Google Scholar
Christopher S, Celenza. “Petrarch, Latin, and Italian Renaissance Latinity.” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 35 (2005) : 509 – 36Google Scholar
Laertius, Diogenes. De uita & moribus philosophorum. Venice, 1490.Google Scholar
Laertius, Diogenes. De uitis, decretis, & responsibus celebrium philosophorum. Basel, 1533.Google Scholar
Erasmus, Desiderius. Opera omnia. Ed. Conseil international pour l’édition des oeuvres complètes d’Erasme. 7 vols. Amsterdam, 1969–.Google Scholar
Ficino, Marsilio. “Argumentum in septimum librum de iusto.” In Plato, Opera omnia, trans. Marsilio Ficino, fol. 219v–221r. Venice, 1491a.Google Scholar
Ficino, Marsilio. “Platonis vita.” In Plato, Opera omnia. Trans. Marsilio Ficino, sigg. a2r–a4v. Venice, 1491b.Google Scholar
Florilegium diversorum epigrammatum in septem libros. Paris, 1531.Google Scholar
Forster, Leonard. “On Petrarchism in Latin and the Role of Anthologies.” In Acta Conventus Neo-Latini Lovaniensis, ed. Josef Ijsewijn and Eckhard Kessler, 235–44. Leuven, 1973.Google Scholar
Garanderie, Marie-Madeleine. “Jules-César Scaliger commentateur d’Hippocrate.” In Acta Scaligeriana, ed. Jean Cubelier de Beynac and Michel Magnien, 245–55. Agen, 1986.Google Scholar
Genette, Gérard. Palimpsests: Literature in the Second Degree. Trans. Channa Newman and Claude Doubinsky. Lincoln, 1997.Google Scholar
Gouveia, Antonio da. Epigrammatωn libri duo. Paris, 1539.Google Scholar
Gouveia, Antonio da. Pro Aristotele responsio, adversus P. Rami calumnias. Paris, 1543.Google Scholar
Grafton, Anthony. “Renaissance Readers of Homer's Ancient Readers.” In Homer's Ancient Readers: The Hermeneutics of Greek Epic's Earliest Exegetes, ed. Robert Lamberton and John J. Keaney, 149–72. Princeton, 1992.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grafton, Anthony. Cardano's Cosmos: The Worlds and Works of a Renaissance Astrologer. Cambridge, MA, 1999.Google Scholar
da Verona, Guarino . “Aristotelis Vita.” In Aristotelis … opera omnia. Basel, 1563.Google Scholar
Hippocrates. Hippocratis Coi medicorum omnium longe principis, octoginta volumina. Trans. Marco Fabio Calvo. Rome, 1525.Google Scholar
Hippocrates, . Hippocratis opera omnia. Venice, 1526.Google Scholar
Hippocrates, . Liber de somniis cum Iulii Caesaris Scaligeri commentariis. Lyon, 1539.Google Scholar
Homer. . Ed. Demetrius Chalcondylas. Florence, 1489.Google Scholar
Hutton, James. The Greek Anthology in Italy to the Year 1800. Ithaca, 1935.Google Scholar
James, Susan. Passion and Action: The Emotions in Seventeenth-Century Philosophy. Oxford, 1997.Google Scholar
Jensen, Kristian. Rhetorical Philosophy and Philosophical Grammar: Julius Caesar Scaliger's Theory of Language Munich, 1990.Google Scholar
Jouanna, Jacques. “L’Interprétation des rêves et la théorie micro-macro-cosmique dans le traité hippocratique Du régime: sémiotique et mimesis.” In Text and Tradition: Studies in Ancient Medicine and Its Transmission Presented to Jutta Kollesch, ed. Klaus-Dietrich Fischer, Diethard Nickel, and Paul Potter, 161–74. Leiden, 1998.Google Scholar
Keller, Luzius. “‘Solo e pensoso,’ ‘Seul et pensif,’ ‘Solitaire et pensif,’ mélancolie pétrarquienne et mélancolie pétrarquiste.” In Übersetzung und Nachahmung im europäischen Petrarkismus. Studien und Texte, ed. Luzius Keller, 89–103, 288–302. Stuttgart, 1974.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kraye, Jill. “Ficino in the Firing Line: A Renaissance Neoplatonist and His Critics.” In Marsilio Ficino: His Theology, His Philosophy, His Legacy, ed. Michael J. B. Allen and Valery Rees, 377–97. Leiden, 2002.Google Scholar
Kusukawa, Sachiko. The Transformation of Natural Philosophy: The Case of Philip Melanchthon. Cambridge, 1995.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lamberton, Robert, and John J. Keaney, eds. Homer's Ancient Readers: The Hermeneutics of Greek Epic's Earliest Exegetes. Princeton, 1992.Google Scholar
Walther, Ludwig. “Plato's Love Epigrams.” Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 4 (1963) : 59 – 82 Google Scholar
Ludwig, Walther. “Petrus Lotichius Secundus and the Roman Elegists: Prolegomena to a Study of Neo-Latin Elegy.” In Classical Influences on European Culture A. D. 1500–1700, ed. R. R. Bolgar, 171–90. Cambridge, 1976.Google Scholar
Christoph, Lüthy. “An Aristotelian Watchdog as Avant-Garde Physicist: Julius Caesar Scaliger.” Monist 84 (2001) : 542 – 561 Google Scholar
Maclean, Ian. Logic, Signs and Nature in the Renaissance: The Case of Learned Medicine. Cambridge, 2002.Google Scholar
Mahoney, Edward P. “Plato and Aristotle in the Thought of Agostino Nifo (ca. 1470–1538).” In Platonismo e aristotelismo nel mezzogiorno dI’talia secc. (XIV–XVI ), ed. Giuseppe Roccaro, 81–101. Palermo, 1989.Google Scholar
Maïer, Ida. Ange Politien: La formation d’un poè te humaniste (1469–1480). Geneva, 1966.Google Scholar
Margaret M, McGowan. “A Renaissance War Dance: The Pyrrhic.” Dance Research 3 (1984) : 29 – 38 Google Scholar
McLaughlin, Martin L. Literary Imitation in the Italian Renaissance: The Theory and Practice of Literary Imitation in Italy from Dante to Bembo. Oxford, 1995.Google Scholar
Megna, Paola. Lo ‘Ione’ platonico nella Firenza medicea. Messina, 1999.Google Scholar
Mulsow, Martin. Frühneuzeitliche Selbsterhaltung. Telesio und die Naturphilosophie der Renaissance. Tübingen, 1998.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nichols, Fred. “The Literary Relationships of the Poemata of Julius Caesar Scaliger.” PhD diss., Columbia University, 1967.Google Scholar
Nifo, Agostino. “De artificiosa somniorum interpretatione.” In Parva naturalia, by Aristotle, sigg. 115r–119v. Venice, 1523.Google Scholar
Nifo, Agostino. De pulchro liber, printed with De amore. Rome, 1531.Google Scholar
Nifo, Agostino. De pulchro et amore/Du beau et de l’amour, I: De pulchro liber/Le livre du beau. Ed. and trans. Laurence Boulègue. Paris, 2003.Google Scholar
Nussbaum, Martha, ed. Love's Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Literature. Oxford, 1990.Google Scholar
Nussbaum, Martha, ed. The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics. Princeton, 1994.Google Scholar
Nutton, Vivian. John Caius and the Manuscripts of Galen. Cambridge, 1987.Google Scholar
Pade, Marianne, ed. Renaissance Readings of the Corpus Aristotelicum. Copenhagen, 2001.Google Scholar
Padelford, Francis Morgan. Select Translations from Scaliger's ‘Poetics’. 1905. Reprint, New York, 1995.Google Scholar
Perfetti, Stefano. “Giulio Cesare Scaliger commentatore e filosofo naturale tra Padova e Francia.” In La presenza dell’aristotelismo padovano nella filosofia della prima modernità, ed. Gregorio Piaia, 3–31. Rome and Padua, 2002.Google Scholar
Petrarca, Francesco. Rime e trionfi. Ed. Ferdinando Neri. 2nd rev. ed. Turin, 1960.Google Scholar
Plato, . Opera. Trans. Marsilio Ficino. Venice, 1491.Google Scholar
Poliziano, Angelo. Opera omnia. Venice, 1498.Google Scholar
Rose, Valentin. Aristoteles pseudepigraphus. Leipzig, 1863. Reprint, Hildesheim, 1971.Google Scholar
Roselli, Amneris. “I Sogni di Ippocrate nell’interpretazione di Giulio Cesare Scaligero.” In Il sogno raccontato: atti del convegno internazionale di Rende, 12–14 novembre 1992, ed. Nicola Merola and Caterina Verbaro, 137–50. Vibo Valentia, 1995.Google Scholar
Scaliger, Julius Caesar. Novorum epigrammatum liber unicus. Paris, 1533.Google Scholar
Scaliger, Julius Caesar. De causis linguae latinae. Lyon, 1540.Google Scholar
Scaliger, Julius Caesar. Poematia. Lyon, 1546.Google Scholar
Scaliger, Julius Caesar. Exotericarum exercitationum liber quintus decimus. Paris, 1557.Google Scholar
Scaliger, Julius Caesar. Poetices libri septem. Lyon, 1561.Google Scholar
Scaliger, Julius Caesar. Epidorpides. Geneva, 1573.Google Scholar
Scaliger, Julius Caesar. Poemata. Heidelberg, 1574.Google Scholar
Scaliger, Julius Caesar. Poetices libri septem. Sieben Bücher über die Dichtkunst. Ed. Luc Deitz and Gregor Vogt-Spira. 5 vols. Stuttgart, 1994–.Google Scholar
Scaliger, Julius Caesar. Oratio pro M. Tullio Cicerone contra des. Erasmum, 1531. Adversus des. Erasmi Roterod. Dialogum Ciceronianumoration secunda, 1537. Ed. Michel Magnien. Geneva, 1999.Google Scholar
Siraisi, Nancy. Avicenna in Renaissance Italy: The ‘Canon’ and Medical Teaching in Italian Universities after 1500. Princeton, 1987.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Siraisi, Nancy. The Clock and the Mirror: Girolamo Cardano and Renaissance Medicine. Princeton, 1997.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Wesley D. The Hippocratic Tradition. Ithaca, 1979.Google Scholar
van der Eijk, Philip J. “Aristotle on ‘Distinguished Physicians’ and on the Medical Significance of Dreams.” In Ancient Medicine in Its Socio-Cultural Context, ed. P. J. van der Eijk et al., 2:447–59. Amsterdam, 1995.Google Scholar
van der Eijk, Philip J. “Aristotle on Cognition in Sleep.” In Sleep, ed. T. Wiedemann and K. Dowden, 25–40. Bari, 2003.Google Scholar
Wear, Andrew, R. K. French, and I. M. Lonie, eds. The Medical Renaissance of the Sixteenth Century. Cambridge, 1985.Google Scholar
Weinberg, Bernard. A History of Literary Criticism in the Italian Renaissance. 2 vols. Chicago, 1961.Google Scholar