Penser entre les lignes. Philologie et Philosophie au Quattrocento. .

Fosca Mariani Zini, ed. Penser entre les lignes. Philologie et Philosophie au Quattrocento.

(Apparat critique, 19.) Paris: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 2001. 340 pp. index. bibi. [euro]29.92. ISBN: 2-85939-625-X.

This volume, a collection of articles on Italian humanism, was published under the auspices of the Centre de Recherche Philologique de Lille. The articles are grouped into three sections that are characterized respectively as "Savoir lire," "Les contorverses philosophiques," and "Lorenzo Valla. Philologue et philosophe." The first section comprises articles by Eckhard Kessler, Mayotte Bollack, and Anthony Grafton, the second has articles by James Hankins, Jill Kraye, Enno Rudolph, and Christopher Celenza, and the third includes articles by John Monfasani, Salvatore Camporeale, and Fosca Mariani Zini. The volume also contains an extensive and valuable bibliography of primary and secondary sources.

Mariani Zini, the editor of the work, notes in the introduction that much of the scholarship on Italian humanism produced after World War II sees this historical era as a clear break from the Middle Ages. The fact is, however, that a great deal of what seems new in this important epoch is traceable to the thirteenth century. Italian humanism, therefore, embodies much that is original to the Quattrocento, but it also has many elements that were appropriated from the late Middle Ages. Mariani Zini goes on to note that the single most important innovation of Quattrocento Italy was its philological method. This new philology made it possible for the humanists to undertake a fresh assessment of the ancient works. Indeed, the humanists learned how to think between the lines "penser entre les lignes" (12). Such a novel and sophisticated reading of the ancient sources led to a transformation of the system of knowing, a transformation that was especially strong in the area of philosophy. Mariani Zini adds that the co ntributors to this volume aim at reconstructing what is medieval and what is original in the culture of Quattrocento Italy. They do so by exploring the multifaceted nature of fifteenth-century culture and by analyzing the philological skills of the humanists.

Not all the articles of this volume support Mariani Zini's assertion that the culture of the Quattrocento was linked with that of the Middle Ages. For example, Hankins' piece on Bruni demonstrates that the Florentine humanist had a certain aversion for medieval practices of translation. A rejection of medieval thinking is apparent also in some segments of Monfasani's study on Valla. Such opposition to medieval method and thought indicates that the presence of medieval strains in the culture of the Quattrocento may not be as widespread as Mariani Zini suggests. Be that as it may, the articles of this volume are on the whole solid, scholarly pieces on important philological and philosophical aspects of fifteenth-century Italy. Regarding the articles of the first section, Kessler provides a skillful analysis of the method of the grammarians of the Quattrocento, such as Battista Guarino, pointing out its novelty and its influence on Renaissance philosophy and science; Bollack undertakes a detailed reading of Mar ullus' emendations of Lucretius' De rerum natura; and Grafton gives a lucid account of the multifaceted interests and activities of Pico della Mirandola, calling attention in the process to the personalities (Poliziano, Ficino, Savanarola) who dominated the intellectual world of Pico's time. As to the articles of the second section, Hankins provides a magisterial reconstruction of the far-reaching and enduring polemic on Bruni's Latin translation of Aristotle's Ethics; Kraye demonstrates convincingly that Poliziano, who is known primarily as a philologist, was also an accomplished philosopher, as one learns from his translation and interpretation of Epictetus' Encheiridion; and both Rudolph and Celenza give an in-depth analysis of Ficino's Neoplatonism, the former argues that Ficino reinterprets Plato's dialectics along the lines of Christian orthodoxy and ancient Neoplatonism, the latter proposes that Ficino's Neoplatonism is to be traced to the post-Plotinus era whose ideology conformed in many ways with Ch ristian doctrines and practices.

With respect to the articles of the last section, Monfasani resolves skillfully and conclusively a number of vexing questions (Valla's year of birth, his notion of the theologia prisca, the cultural and linguistic implications of a key passage of the Elegantiae, etc.) that have bedeviled the scholarship on Valla; Camporeale revisits the controversy between Poggio and Valla regarding the latter's philological enterprises, but he enriches it with an illuminating assessment of Erasmus' defense of Valla's philological method; and Mariani Zini studies the originality of Valla's ontology, especially his notion of the res. Thought-provoking, innovative, and erudite throughout, this collection of articles is a valuable and welcome addition to the rich literature on Quattrocento Italy.