This essay discusses the role of the Chambers of Rhetoric (literary guilds or confraternities) in the construction of urban culture in the Southern Low Countries. The Chambers of Rhetoric not only contributed to the forging of urban identity through their associational practices, but also played an important role in the molding of public space through theatrical representations and the staging of civic ritual. In particular, the Chambers’ participation in large-scale regional and interregional theater and poetry competitions is crucial for our understanding of sixteenth-century urban culture in the Low Countries.

This essay considers commentaries on and translations of Plato’s Symposium (by Marsilio Ficino, the Henri Estienne-Jean de Serres team, and, preeminently, Louis Le Roy) as well as an influential Neoplatonic passage from Baldassar Castiglione’s Il Cortegiano to explore some of the implications of, and dynamics behind, the heterosexualization of Platonic eros in the Renaissance. Focusing on the specific work done by different texts in particular contexts rather than homogenizing the translation of pederastic eros, the essay contributes to a critical genealogy of heterosexuality. Links between Le Roy’s effort and the cultural and political ambitions of the French monarchy receive particular attention.

The fall of Negroponte to the Turks in 1470 was one of the first events in European history to be recorded in print. This article examines a little-known cluster of more than a dozen texts published in the months after the colony’s fall by some of the earliest printers to work in Italy. These editions did not “break” the news to the Italian public but rather offered analysis and commentary to an already well-informed readership. Some catered to contemporary demands for vernacular political poetry, while others now reveal the extent to which Italian humanists attached themselves to the printing industry in its earliest years, often with ambiguous results”