Petite Patrie" L'Image de la Region Natale Chez les Ecrivains de la Renaissance

Geneva: Librairie Droz, 2013. First Edition. Paperback. Octavo; 391pp. Index. Cream wrappers with color illustration to front cover. A Fine copy. This work, the result of an international symposium held in Dijon in March 2012, reflects on the theme of the native region among the writers of the Renaissance, whether they write in Latin or French. It proposes to consider the image that these have left of their "small homeland", as Cicero called Arpinum. While interested in authors from Southern Europe (the Mantouan Battista Spagnoli, the Spaniard Juan Luis Vives), it makes the best of the northern writers, known or lesser known, from various countries (Flemish, German, Scottish, French...). The communications identify the characteristics of a northern humanism which, by its regional Anchorage, asserts itself in opposition or rivalry with the humanism of the South, and analyses the different modalities of the description of the Natal region: often commendation, more rarely critical, it is sometimes "biased" (the "small homeland" is not the birthplace but another place), or even refused (especially by the Protestant authors). The ensemble presents itself as a vast glimpse of the image left by their native region of some thirty authors of various literary genres, of various countries, of various confessions, but all testify to the very rich character of this motive for a Hermeneutics of their works. (Publisher). Travaux d'Humanisme et Renaissance 521.