This conference announcement comes to us via Franziska Schaudeck (University of Freiburg)
During the Renaissance not only theories of art, science and philosophy altered. The ways of making warfare changed as well. Subsequently new military structures appeared and with them the demands made on affected persons. Considering new writing and reading habits the conference “Books for captains and captains in books: Italo-German conference on the training and image of the military leader during the Renaissance” at the Herzog August Bibliothek (24.-25.2.2014) attends to investigate the relations and interrelations between Italy and Germany focusing on the figure of the ‘captain’ in art and literature. What was a ‘captain’ supposed to be in Italian and German culture of the new age?
From the conference announcement on H-Soz-Kult :
The conference will concentrate on certain undervalued aspects of the relations between Italy and Germany in the Modern Age. Interrelations in both artistic and religious spheres have been extensively explored by scholars, but there is still much study to be done on the reciprocal influences of literary genres, editorial circuits and cultural exchanges between the two countries. Throughout the Modern Age both have experienced an endemic state of war: religious, social and political conflicts were the order of the day and became part of the collective imagination, with a massive influence on literature and the arts. In Italy as in Germany, the figure of the military commander played an important role in this process, and his Institutio knitted together military and civil virtues, assuming religious and political connotations.
The captain, who held not only military but also moral authority, was the subject of an extremely vast and largely unexplored cultural production which, from the second half of the sixteenth century and for at least the next hundred years, sought to describe and establish the traits of the good, perfect and even sacred commander.
The ultimate purpose of the conference is to focus the manifold universe of this phenomenon in Italy and Germany through the analysis of portraits, descriptions, institutiones, translations, biographies, treatises, and by presenting both representative examples and special cases.
The full conference programme is available on H-Soz-Kult or at Herzog August Bibliothek [PDF] .
Book History and Print Culture Network 