Miscellanies

Stromata was the third in the trilogy of Clement of Alexandria and continues with the individual cases of conduct began in Paedagogus. Protrepticus, the first in the trilogy, deals with the religious basis of Christian morality and lays a foundation in the knowledge of divine truth. Paedagogus, the second and Stromata, third with the individual cases of conduct. As with Epictetus, true virtue shows itself with him in its external evidences by a natural, simple, and moderate way of living. Titus Flavius Clemens, known as Clement of Alexandria, was a Christian theologian who taught at the Catechetical School of Alexandria. A convert to Christianity, he was an educated man who was familiar with classical Greek philosophy and literature. Clement was influenced by Hellenistic philosophy to a greater extent than any other Christian thinker of his time, and in particular by Plato and the Stoics.

"Poliziano's chief claim to fame as a philologist rests upon the work edited here, the Miscellanea, the first set published in 1489, the second left unfinished at his death and published for the first time in 1972. His essential model was the Attic Nights of Aulus Gellius (2nd century CE). Like Gellius, he produced individual chapters each on a set topic and with a corresponding title, with the titles listed at the beginning of the work as a guide to readers. Another model was the Natural History of the Elder Pliny, from which he borrowed the practice of listing at the beginning the sources he had used in the course of the project in order to ensure that the work would be taken seriously and could not be readily dismissed. Like both authors, he precedes the work with a Preface. In addition, borrowing from and extending the usage of typographers of his day, he added a coronis or tailpiece (which we might call an "Epilogue") at the end of Century I, explaining the history of the preceding text and taking a stand on rival claims to priority. He does not explain exactly why he chose one hundred as the number of chapters for each set of the Miscellanea (several sets appear to have been planned from an early stage). Possibly he used the practice of the Greek paroemiographers as a model, who organized their materials century by century. A miscellany was, in fact, the perfect form for Poliziano because it enabled him to range widely over ancient literature and culture with a focus on particular problems, above all passages of ancient authors that were obscure and/or had been wrongly explained by predecessors, that seemed to contradict each other or one's notion of an author's knowledge or competence. He was able to bring to bear his wide reading of authors and acquaintance with antiquities as well as his dialectical skills to shed new light on many such issues. A typical chapter of the Miscellanea begins with a problem Poliziano has encountered, most frequently a particular passage of a classical text that, on its face, does not make sense grammatically, metrically, or in view of known facts about the author or his society. Poliziano will quote the offending passage together with previous attempts at exegesis, if relevant. After showing these to be inadequate, Poliziano proceeds to outline his solution and how he arrived at it, often with copious citations of parallel passages to illustrate the point of usage or the particular content he is arguing for. He may conclude the chapter with a brief summary, especially if the argumentation has been involved, or with a kind of footnote on some point of detail that he felt should be explained. Occasionally, he will be moved to insert a kind of editorial preface ahead of the treatment of the problem in order to make a general point about scholarly procedure or the like. A few of the chapters do not center on philological problems at all but incorporate information that he simply found interesting and wanted to share, such as the disquisition on lime-tree bark (I 72), the report of Severianus's views on the position of the sun and moon at the creation (I 94), or the testimonies for the poet Erinna (II 26). Some of his most striking contributions are, in fact, the discoveries he presents"--

Perhaps more than any other kind of book, manuscript miscellanies require a complex and ‘material’ reading strategy. This collection of essays engages the renewed and expanding interest in early modern English miscellanies, anthologies, and other compilations. Manuscript Miscellanies in Early Modern England models and refines the study of these complicated collections. Several of its contributors question and redefine the terms we use to describe miscellanies and anthologies. Two senior scholars correct the misidentification of a scribe and, in so doing, uncover evidence of a Catholic, probably Jesuit, priest and community in a trio of manuscripts. Additional contributors show compilers interpreting, attributing, and arranging texts, as well as passively accepting others’ editorial decisions. While manuscript verse miscellanies remain appropriately central to the collection, several essays also involve print and prose, ranging from letters to sermons and even political prophesies. Using extensive textual and bibliographical evidence, the collection offers stimulating new readings of literature, politics, and religion in the early modern period, and promises to make important interventions in academic studies of the history of the book.

This book is a critical study of the ancestors of contemporary poetry anthologies: the poetic miscellanies of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It argues that miscellanies are a distinctive kind of literary collection and that their popularity in the period 1680–1800 had a far-reaching impact on authors, publishers, and readers of poetry. This study expands the definition of miscellanies to include single-author collections called miscellanies as well as the multiple-author collections that have traditionally been the focus of scholarly attention. It shows how multiple-author miscellanies fostered different kinds of literary community and explores the neglected role of single-author miscellanies in the self-fashioning of eighteenth-century writers. Later chapters examine miscellanies’ relationships with periodicals, their contribution to the formation of the literary canon, and their reception and transformation in the hands of readers. The book draws on newly available digital data as well as evidence from hundreds of printed miscellanies to shed new light on how poetry was written, published, and read in the long eighteenth century.