Title Affiliations Abstract "The Renaissance and rebirth myths in modern Japan. Historiographic reception and cultural symbolizations of the Renaissance from Meiji Restoration to the present" "Department of Languages and Cultures" "The Project explores Japanese interpretations of the culture and philosophy of the EuropeanRenaissance. Spanning the history of Japanese historiography on this topic - from the MeijiRestoration to the present day, focusing on the first half of the 20th century -, I will analyze how and to what extent such interpretations contribute to a symbolic imagination of the 'Renaissance'.The project surveys Japanese scholars' leading theories on the Renaissance and Humanism,offering an unusual perspective on well-known historiographic issues. The project aims to: 1)analyze interpretations, representations, and conceptualizations of the Renaissance andHumanism within Japanese historiography, comparing them with those of their American andEuropean counterparts, 2) reveal the symbolic uses of the dense word 'Renaissance' as acquired in Japanese culture, and show how such uses either match or differ from those of Western historiography.The project treats Renaissance philosophical texts and the classics of Western historiography as secondary sources, affording the works of Japanese interpreters - typically viewed as secondary sources - a primary source role. In that respect, the Renaissance offers ground for new research into changes in Japanese intellectuals' cultural background and world view.Ultimately, the research intends to answer the questions: Does crosscultural exchange increase experience's degree of imaginability and conceivability? Can we consider it a heuristic device?" "Language comparison and emancipation: The pivotal role of Ancient Greek in Renaissance language studies (ca. 1390– 1600)" "Toon Van Hal" "Latin Literature, Leuven, Comparative, Historical and Applied Linguistics, Leuven" "When did the comparative turn occur in language studies? Even though linguistic comparison has earlier precursors, it became common only in the early modern era. The period after 1600, in particular, has been regarded as a crucial turning point. This project will investigate the hypothesis that the roots of the comparative approach should be dated earlier, in the Renaissance (ca. 1390– 1600). The rediscovery of Greek grammar played a pivotal role in this development, as many humanists tied their native vernaculars to the Greek tongue when composing grammars of both Greek and the vernaculars. This endeavor led them to compare these languages to various degrees of intensity, in various ways, and with regard to various features. This project will investigate whether and, if so, how this comparative reflex was related to the standardization of the vernaculars. More specifically, the project will systematically test for the first time the idea that the Greek language stimulated the emancipation of the vernaculars. Testing this second hypothesis is crucial, because it is often upheld in modern scholarship but barely supported with concrete evidence. The project will also explore the possibility of integrating the “comparative turn hypothesis” and the “emancipation hypothesis” into one overarching hypothesis. It will result in five scholarly articles and a database of Renaissance grammars of Greek (inspiration), provisionally entitled Anagennèsis" "In Looking Back, Becoming Modern: Shifting Discourses on 'Latin Renaissance' in the French and Italian Literary Fields, 1870-1915" "Jurgen Pieters" "Department of Literary Studies" "When we think about the Renaissance, we mainly remember the enticing legacy of its artworks. Yet, the myth of Renaissance as a historical period of ‘rebirth’ has also assumed symbolic values in debates on cultures and nations worldwide, from the USA to Japan. Between the late 19th and the early 20th century, the symbolic framework of Renaissance was highly prominent among French and Italian thinkers who partook in debates that go under the umbrella term of Latin Renaissance. Latin Renaissance defended the dignity of the so-called Latin cultures against the growing prestige of Northern nations and literatures. It also contested Northern-centric visions of Europe that professed the alleged backwardness of Latin Europe. As I will show, the longing for Latin rebirth led French and Italian thinkers to mobilise discursive dichotomies (Renaissance-Reformation, Classicism-Romanticism, etc) that served to delegitimise Northern supremacy and to re-establish their own literatures and cultures. By examining literary debates on Latin Renaissance, I will tackle its various faces. I will prove how the shifting meanings of rebirth mobilised in the debates relied on competing visions of the historical Renaissance & its legacy in literary history. As such, my project opens ground-breaking research paths in the field of European Literary Studies." "Use and social functions of epistolary formulae: exploring letter writing in Renaissance Italy" "Claudia Crocco" "Department of Linguistics" "Private letters have become the genre of choice for exploring language variation and change in the past. Cross-linguistically, discussion has arisen around the role of epistolary formulae, i.e. prefabricated word strings, including, for example, address forms and health wishes. The function of formulae as aids for less skilled writers has been put forward in studies on the history of Germanic languages, which have shown that writers with little writing experience made great use of formulae. However, formulae could have other functions, related to social roles. This project will examine the interplay between writing experience and group practices by focusing on the use of formulae in early modern Italy. The high literacy rates for the Italian peninsula mean that we have a large quantity of letters by women and by individuals of different status. At the same time, the sixteenth-century printing market was flooded with books of letters and manuals that aimed to teach letter writing. Focusing on sixteenth-century Tuscany, I will analyse the distribution of formulae in relation to status, gender and communities of practice. I will focus on the Buonarroti corpus, produced by c. 250 individuals from different social ranks, and on a corpus of private letters by women. I will then compare usage in private letters with a corpus of sixteenth-century letter manuals and anthologies, to assess the relationship between prescriptive material and actual letter-writing practice." "Understanding the technological and economical history of enigmatic green copper sulfate pigments in Flemish Renaissance art." "Geert Van der Snickt" "Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium (KMSKB), Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage (KIK/IRPA), Antwerp Cultural Heritage Sciences (ARCHES)" "The beginning of the 16th century marked the start of a prosperous time for Flanders with the flourishing of culture, trade and science directly reflected into the works of art of the Antwerp School. However, the year 1500 does not only mark a period of stylistic revolution, the works of art also change from a technological point of view with Flemish painters experimenting with innovative materials and techniques, an aspect that has remained understudied hitherto. In this framework, recent analytical studies signaled the use of copper sulfates, an unknown green pigment type, that seems to witness the artist's pursuit to expand the limited range of pigments and enhance the realistic representation of nature. The aim of this research is to understand (a) the use (prevalence, technique, relation to other green pigments), (b) the provenance (where was it produced), the production method (historical technology) and (c) the trade (how and why did it come to Flanders) of these new materials. This will be done by combining the study of textual historical sources and the physical reproduction of the technology with a chemical screening of paintings and illuminated manuscripts. In this way, we propose exploiting the new vistas created by the recent introduction of chemical imaging techniques to enhance our understanding of the interplay of science, technology and trade with the bloom of Flemish Renaissance art and its stylistic innovations." "“Rinascimento Ritrovato”. The Renaissance Revival and the Universal Man in Gabriele d’Annunzio (1863-1938) and His Time" "Mara Santi" "Department of Literary Studies" "If we ask you what we inherited from the Italian Renaissance, your thoughts will possibly run to the artworks that fascinate scholars and students all around the world. But, along with material masterpieces, the Renaissance has left us an immaterial legacy, a concept, still dear to our hearts,that has shaped Western culture down the last two centuries: the ‘Universal Man’ [UM]. The UM, Leon Battista Alberti put it, is ‘a woman/man that can do all things, if she/he will’. The UM is an individual eager to learn and willing to dominate the universe thanks to her/his skills and knowledge. Although firmly rooted in the Humanistic idea that we are limitless in our capacities for development, the UM is incredibly close to Western ideals of success and progress, for we have drawn inspiration from the UM when this concept has been re-introduced in our culture at the dawn of the 20th century. Indeed, the Renaissance has influenced us not only because the seeds of the modern world were sown there, but also because the UM has been re-vitalised (by scholars and philosophers) and afterwards spread to the collective imaginary by storytellers. One of the most influential storyteller who chose the UM as a protagonist of his works was Gabriele d’Annunzio (1863-1938). This project focuses on the reception and interpretation of the Italian Renaissance in d’Annunzio and aims at providing the first comprehensive study of the revival of the UM in d’Annunzio’s prose works." "Fragments of Order. Constructing Renaissance Architecture in the Low Countries" "Krista De Jonge" "History, Theory and Criticism of Architecture" "We aim to revisit the introduction of antiquity-based architecture into the Low Countries of the early sixteenth century by focusing on the architectural fragment (base, capital, column shaft, and entablature), its various avatars (in three-dimensional form, in drawing and in print), and its uses. Assembling antique architectural fragments was a widely accepted design strategy in the early Renaissance, but the new theory of the Five column Orders subjected such free assemblages to strict rules of composition and proportioning from the 1520s onwards, condemning many of the older works in the antique manner as ""monstruous"" or misshapen. Nevertheless, interest in the fragment is an important strand in the texture of early Netherlandish architectural thinking. Shared by painters, engravers, draughtsmen and other designers of architecture as well as by patrons and collectors, it connects the early sixteenth-century Netherlandish arts with early ""archaeology"" or antiquarianism across the borders. Prints and drawings coming from Italy inspired ""antique"" compositions and were in their turn copied into Netherlandish model books and prints, successfully spread by the burgeoning print market. Many of the latter are still unpublished, and have never been connected with contemporary Netherlandish painting, nor with the contemporary culture of collecting. This project will bring these unknown aspects to light, thus changing the accepted view of early modern Netherlandish architecture." "Christian-Muslim Controversy during the Syriac Renaissance (1026-1318): Dionysius Bar Salibi (d. 1171) and the Treatis Against the Arabs." "Mehdi Azaiez" "Research Unit of Biblical Studies, Research Unit of History of Church and Theology" "The treatise Against the Arabs (Luqbal Ṭayyōyē) provides us with an exceptional source for the assessment of Christian-Muslim relations during a period of Syriac literary revival. Belonging to a larger polemic work of Dionysius Bar Salibi (d. 1171), a prolific writer and Syriac Orthodox “Jacobite” bishop, this treatise is the longest, most comprehensive and latest in the tradition of Syriac Christian-Muslim dispute texts. The document is made all the more unique by the fact that it contains not only a considerable amount of information on early Islamic history and internal Muslim divisions, but also large fragments of the Qur’an which exhibit variants from the received version. A study of the treatise’s content and its sources in light of previous dispute texts, as well as its literary and historical context, is needed for a better understanding of its significance in the history of Christian-Muslim relations. Furthermore, insight into the Qur’anic source could also shed new light on the textual history of the Qur’an, since it has been suggested that Dionysius used a Syriac translation of a pre-standardized version of the Qur’an. Additionally, Dionysius wrote this refutation of Islam during the Syriac Renaissance, a period generally characterized by its positive intra-Christian and Christian-Muslim dynamics. Therefore a study of his views towards both Islam and other Christians could also provide a more nuanced understanding of both features." "The body as a mirror of the soul: an inquiry into the reception of the Physiognomonica in the Middle Ages and Renaissance." "Pieter De Leemans, Russell Friedman" "De Wulf-Mansion Centre for Ancient, Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy" "Medieval scholars reading (pseudo-)Aristotle’s Physiognomonica, a text dealing with the deduction of internal character traits from external features, did not read this treatise in the original Greek language, but had access to it through the Latin translation by Bartholomew of Messina (13th century). This translation (rather than the original Greek text) circulated widely in the medieval West and was instrumental in the dissemination of Aristotle’s natural philosophical thought during the Middle Ages. This project offers the first critical edition of this influential translation of the Physiognomonica (based on a careful analysis of all extant manuscripts), accompanied by a study of its reception in medieval thought. This reception study will reveal the importance of this text for the history of medicine, the history of emotions and the history of philosophy by charting and analyzing the medieval commentaries that were written on this treatise, as well as by studying the ways in which this text was used at late medieval universities and which status it enjoyed.  " "Of Monsters and Men. The Reception of Suetonius Lives of the Twelve Caesars in the Renaissance." "Jan Papy" "Latin Literature, Leuven" "As monsters rather than men: that is how the Latin historian Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus portrayed the first Roman emperors. Not surprisingly, then, his Lives of the Twelve Caesars (a fascinating potpourri of fact, rumor and scandal, dixit Stadter 2007) have amused, shocked and intrigued readers from Late Antiquity onwards. Although in the Early Modern period, when the rise of absolute monarchs made his Lives increasingly relevant to the readers own times, Suetonius work became even more popular than it had been in the Middle Ages, its fortuna in the Renaissance is largely unexplored. By studying Suetonius biographies from Caesar to Domitian (which do not only paint a unique picture of the looks and character of the Roman emperors, but also provide invaluable inside information on life at the imperial court) both as literary models, antiquarian-historical sources, mirrors-for-princes and vehicles for political propaganda, the envisaged research project will explore the different ways in which Suetonius was read and used between 1400 and 1700."