The Kallierges Pindar : a study in Renaissance Greek scholarship and printing

by: Fogelmark, S.

Price: 189,00 EURO

1 copy in stock

Staffan Fogelmark

The Kallierges Pindar

A Study in Renaissance Greek Scholarship and Printing

2 volumes. XVII, 787 pp. incl. 160 plates. 21 x 28 cm. Cloth in slipcase.

In 1515 the Roman printer Zacharias Kallierges issued an edition of the odes of Pindar, the famous ancient Greek poet, of such high quality that it became the vulgate text for three centuries and is still of great value today as it contains reading variants that cannot be found in any of the more than 200 Pindar manuscripts that are known up to the present. Scholars and editors alike have been debating and disagreeing about the manuscript background of the editio Romana for two hundred years.

What none of them has been aware of is that in contrast to what they assumed, they have not always been discussing the same book: in all these years no one has observed that as many as ten sheets (80 pages) have been reset and come in two variants. And it gets much worse: copies of the book may not come in two variants only but in any of more than 40 variants, because the printer sandwiched the sheets more or less at random when gathering them for copies of the book.

The author discusses these and a number of related and highly interesting questions with far-reaching consequences for the Pindar text. However, the discussion is also widened to deal with the book as a physical object, bringing up relevant questions of early printing and analytical bibliography.

The study is based on a sample of 227 copies. For nearly one hundred of them basic data are given, such as watermarks, also including the twins (more than 25,000 watermark data have been recorded); also, the permutation of each one of the 227 copies is given. The Kallierges Pindar appears to have been set in type by five compositors and to have been printed on three presses: a full account is given of the task and order of each press.

During his research into the 1515 Pindar and its long-kept secrets, the author had the exceptional fortune of uncovering the greatest secret of them all, revealed here: a unique copy has a hitherto unknown three-page-long dedication in stately Greek prose by Kallierges to an outstanding Renaissance scholar and humanist, namely his close friend and colleague at the Medicean Greek College, Marcus Musurus.

This sensational document, until now utterly unknown and of great interest to students of Renaissance Greek humanism and learning as well as early Greek printing, is now published for the first time after its initial appearance in 1515 and translated and discussed at length. In the wake of this extraordinary discovery, one of the most illustrious Greek scholars of the Italian Renaissance is exposed as a plagiarist.

The Kallierges Pindar addresses a multiple readership: analytical bibliographers, classical scholars, students of Renaissance culture and early printing, to mention just a few groups of readers who will find a challenge in the many observations and questions laid before them. (Knowledge of Greek is not a prerequisite for profiting from reading the book as virtually all the Greek that appears in the main text is translated.)

”Fogemark?s magnificent volumes address two different publics: Pindar specialists, who will find here a careful investigation of a crucial moment in Pindar?s textual history, the 1515 editio Romana; and book historians, who will discover a remarkable case study in Renaissance book production … The present study carries such a number of new features and remarks that Kallierges? edition is again put in full light: it will therefore provide much information to both Pindar scholars and Renaissance Greek scholars. … F.?s second major discovery concerns the preliminary texts and brings in some more typical Renaissance mystery.

Instead of immediately providing the reader with answers and explanations of all problems and quibbles, F. prefers to have the reader ?make the journey in [his] company? (p. XV); this approach makes the reading very engaging and gives it somewhat of the suspense of an elegantly written scientific novel.” — L. Sanchi, The Classical Review, 67.1, 12-14, Cambridge 2016

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„This is a fascinating book, beautifully illustrated, with 160 plates of pages of the different settings, copious indexes, and appendixes documenting the author?s meticulous scholarship, as well as his love for his subject, and it is impossible, in the limited space of this review, to do justice to the wealth of information and the numerous original points of detail it offers. Scholars working on Pindar and on the Greek Renaissance will be grateful to Fogelmark for this enormous effort of many decades.“ — G. D?Alessio, : Bryn Mawr Classical Review, 2017.07.2

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„Comme il sied à un travail consacré à l?histoire de l?édition et de l?imprimerie, la réalisation matérielle reflète la qualité intellectuelle de la tâche menée à bien. Ce fruit du labeur de toute une vie requiert assurément des vertus peu communes : patience, minutie, endurance, empathie pour une figure de la tradition philologique, pour un livre et une époque aussi. En complément de cette présentation générale, les spécialistes de telle ou telle discipline aborderont en détail les points méritant un examen approfondi.“ — P. Hummel, Revue des Études grecques, vol. 129 (2016/2), pp. 607-614.

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„A work of painstaking research that offers a wealth of data and tantalizing questions for further study, Staffan Fogelmark?s study of Zacharias Kallierges?s 1515 edition of the Odes of Pindar emerges as a cornerstone of philological research on the early editions of the Greek classics printed in the sixteenth century. With this comprehensive work, Fogelmark addresses those of us who might wish to learn more about the history of Pindar?s text— locating Kallierges?s Roman edition within the wider tradition of the manuscript and the context of the first printed editions of epinikia— and those who, being perhaps less interested in the vicissitudes and later philological reconstruction of the Greek text, are more interested in the history of printing and the earliest ‚Greek? books to be produced on Italian presses. As such, it brings the author?s not inconsiderable gifts to bear on two important subjects in the field of the humanities, though it is a work that ultimately retains a unitary character, managing to offer deep insights into the wider world of the Italian Renaissance …

This momentous work of scholarship will naturally be of interest to classical philologists and bibliophiles, but students of Renaissance history will also find abundant data and new insights to interest them. Among the many new contributions to scholarship, we might highlight the discovery, in the copy of the 1515 publication held at Cambridge?s Jesus College library, of a dedicatory letter addressed by Kallierges to his friend MarcusMusurus. Every other copy viewed by the author includes a dedicatory letter to Cornelio Benigno. This epistle to Musurus is published and translated in the second volume. Fogelmark?s discovery makes it even clearer to what extent each of Kallierges?s editions can be considered a unique book, a vehicle for new learning that not only added to the erudition of its publisher, but enriched the very culture in which he operated.“ — Francesco G. Giannachi, Renaissance Quarterly LXX/4, 2018, pp. 1473-1475

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„Le « magnum opus » de Staffan Fogelmark est un ouvrage hors du commun tant par le support que par le contenu. La maison d?édition Jürgen Dinter a en effet produit deux magnifiques volumes, luxueusement reliés, dont la mise en page est un plaisir non seulement pour la lecture mais aussi pour le regard : relevons en particulier l?abondance de tableaux synthétiques, de listes récapitulatives, d?index et surtout les 160 illustrations de grande qualité reproduisant les pages des éditions sur lesquelles porte principalement l?analyse de l?auteur …

En outre, l?immense travail de quarante ans consacré à l?édition de Calliergi par Staffan Fogelmark fournit aux philologues et aux historiens du livre une documentation abondante, des relevés minutieux de variantes textuelles, de caractéristiques matérielles du travail éditorial et des statistiques qui font sens. Enfin, comme cela a été dit d?emblée, au-delà des analyses techniques, le livre invite ses lecteurs à partager les aventures intellectuelles de celui qui l?a conçu. Espérons que malgré son prix élevé, il sera abondamment diffusé, car il associe à la richesse du contenu la beauté formelle des chefs-d?œuvre de l?imprimerie qui depuis le XVe siècle sont conservés et admirés dans de nombreuses bibliothèques.“ — Monique Mund-Dopchie, L?Antiquité Classique 87, 2018, pp. 711-714.

The Kallierges Pindar : a study in Renaissance Greek scholarship and printing

by: Fogelmark, S.

• ISBN-13: 9783924794606 / 978-3-924794-60-6
• ISBN-03: 392479460X / 3-924794-60-X
• Jurgen Dinter, Cologne, 2015

Price: 189,00 EURO

1 copy in stock