دانلود کتاب Literary Forgery in Early Modern Europe, 1450–1800

Forgery is an eternal problem. In literature and the writing of history, suspiciously attributed texts can be uniquely revealing when subjected to a nuanced critique. False and spurious writings impinge on social and political realities to a degree rarely confronted by the biographical criticism of yesteryear. They deserve a more critical reading of the sort far more often bestowed on canonical works of poetry and prose fiction.

The first comprehensive treatment of literary and historiographical forgery to appear in a quarter of a century, Literary Forgery in Early Modern Europe, 1450–1800 goes well beyond questions of authorship, spotlighting the imaginative vitality of forgery and its sinister impact on genuine scholarship. This volume demonstrates that early modern forgery was a literary tradition in its own right, with distinctive connections to politics, Greek and Roman classics, religion, philosophy, and modern literature. The thirteen essays draw immediate inspiration from Johns Hopkins University’s acquisition of the Bibliotheca Fictiva, the world’s premier research collection dedicated exclusively to the subject of literary forgery, which consists of several thousand rare books and unique manuscript materials from the early modern period and beyond.

The early modern explosion in forgery of all kinds—particularly in the kindred documentary fields of literary and archaeological falsification—was the most visible symptom of a dramatic shift in attitudes toward historical evidence and in the relation of texts to contemporary society. The authors capture the impact of this evolution within many fundamental cultural transformations, including the rise of print, changing tastes and fortunes of the literary marketplace, and the Protestant and Catholic Reformations.

Contributors: Frederic Clark, James Coleman, Richard Cooper, Arthur Freeman, Anthony Grafton, A. Katie Harris, Earle A. Havens, Jack Lynch, Shana D. O’Connell, Ingrid Rowland, Walter Stephens, Elly Truitt, Kate Tunstall

Review
"A mature and wide-ranging reflection on the subject of literary forgery that demonstrates how the field might be developed in future years, this book offers privileged insights into the perennial feature of human inventiveness and perversity that is literary forgery. All the contributions are hugely entertaining and illuminate different sectors of the topic in a way which is very satisfying."

(Ian Maclean, University of Oxford, author of Scholarship, Commerce, Religion: The Learned Book in the Age of Confessions, 1560–1630)

"When does invention become fraud? Is it the author or the reader who perpetrates the falsehood? Tackling ghosts and impostures, texts manufactured to mislead, and historical writers made to speak falsely, this wonderful collection tastes the ripest fruits engineered for a new field of early modern study: the Bibliotheca Fictiva."

(Scott Mandelbrote, University of Cambridge, coeditor of Jewish Books and Their Readers: Aspects of the Intellectual Life of Christians and Jews in Early Modern Europe)

"The essays gathered in this volume demonstrate that studying early modern European literary forgeries is a fascinating cultural adventure. Forged documents from the weighty tomes of Annius of Viterbo to the letter of the Virgin Mary for the citizens of Messina showed that forgeries were capable of representing a surprising variety of polemics."

(Lina Bolzoni, Scuola Normale Superiore, author of The Gallery of Memory: Literary and Iconographic Models in the Age of the Printing Press)

"Just as we can't help but admire the con artist's stings and scams, so readers of this wide-ranging collection of papers will take pleasure in discovering―thanks to the investigations of these learned academic Sherlocks―not only the ingenuity and chutzpah of some notable Renaissance forgers but also the possible reasons behind their impostures."

(Michael Dirda, Pulitzer Prize-winning literary journalist and author of the Edgar Award-winning "On Conan Doyle")

"Literary Forgery provides a fascinating meditation upon the proliferation of spurious early modern documents that invented elements of the classical and medieval past and embellished aspects of the early modern world. Filled with deeply researched case studies of forgers and forgeries, this delightful volume explores the fluidity of fact and fiction. Welcome to the early modern 'House of Forgery'!"

(Paula Findlen, Stanford University, author of Early Modern Things: Objects and Their Histories, 1500–1800)

"Fake news is old news. That's the testimony of this fascinating collection headlined by the world's greatest experts on learned and literary duplicity. Packed with erudition and up-to-date detective work, this book is also great fun."

(Brian P. Copenhaver, University of California, Los Angeles, author of Magic in Western Culture: From Antiquity to the Enlightenment)

About the Author
Walter Stephens is the Charles S. Singleton Professor of Italian Studies at Johns Hopkins University.

Earle A. Havens is the Nancy H. Hall Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts in the Sheridan Libraries of Johns Hopkins University.

Janet E. Gomez earned her PhD in Italian from Johns Hopkins University. Together, the three served as co-curators of the 2014 rare book exhibition of the Bibliotheca Fictiva collection and accompanying catalogue, Fakes, Lies, and Forgeries.