This project will reveal how highly successful scholars of the early Italian Renaissance engaged in vehement and (today) reprehensible ill humour to promote and defend their persona and career. In particular, this study seeks to understand how these early modern scholars' insults stirred affective reactions from their audience.
From the title page of Petrarch's 'Virgil' by Simone Martini, c. 1336. Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
This study takes a novel approach to the study of early modern invectives, highly literary and codified expressions of enmity. Research shows that these intellectuals did not look only at ancient Roman texts and lexicon to pen their invectives: they also took advantage of a strong tradition or oral slur that has been recently investigated by social historians (Trevor Dean, Elizabeth Horodowich, Peter Burke, and Guido Ruggiero). This effectively undermines the understanding of early humanist invectives as an entirely learned endeavour, and suggests a closer connection to the religious and political slander used a century later by Luther and Erasmus. Hurling insults was an effective (and affective) way to establish identity and gain consensus across diverse social echelons.
This project investigates how these humanists' insults were designed to stir the affective reaction from both Latinate and semi-Latinate audiences. The existence of such a broader audience is revealed by fifteenth-century humanists, but has not been investigated in any significant way: for instance, Gregorio Tifernate (1414-1462) reveals that Bracciolini’s venomous invective against Filelfo was read publicly in Ferrara and made the non-Latinate audience cheer and laugh wildly.
