Cristoforo Landino: His Works and Thought

238 Pages·2019·1.254 MB·English

by  Bruce McNair

Cristoforo Landino
Medieval and Renaissance
Authors and Texts
Editor-in-Chief
Francis G. Gentry (Emeritus Professor of German, Penn State University)
Editorial Board
Teodolinda Barolini (Lorenzo Da Ponte Professor of Italian, Columbia
University)
Cynthia Brown (Professor of French, University of California, Santa Barbara)
Marina Brownlee (Robert Schirmer Professor of Spanish and Professor of
Comparative Literature, Princeton University)
Keith Busby (Douglas Kelly Professor of Medieval French, University of
Wisconsin-Madison)
Craig Kallendorf (Professor of English and Classics, Texas A&M University)
Alastair Minnis (Professor of English, Yale University)
Brian Murdoch (Professor of German, Stirling University)
Jan Ziolkowski (Arthur Kingsley Porter Professor of Medieval Latin, Harvard
University and Director, Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection)
volume 21
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/mrat
Cristoforo Landino
His Works and Thought
By
Bruce McNair
LEIDEN | BOSTON
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available online at http://catalog.loc.gov
Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface.
issn 0925-7683
isbn 978-90-04-38651-8 (hardback)
isbn 978-90-04-38952-6 (e-book)
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Contents
Acknowledgements vii
1 Landino and His Works 1
2 The Xandra 13
1 Main Themes 13
2 Furor 15
3 Earthly Love—Heavenly Love 16
4 Civis poeta 19
5 Conclusion 25
3 Three Studio Courses of the 1450s and 1460s 28
1 Landino’s Praefatio in Tusculanis Ciceronis (1458) 28
2 Landino’s Prolusione to His Course on Petrarch’s Canzoniere (1467) 33
3 Landino’s Praefatio in Virgilio and 1462–63 Lectures on the Aeneid
Books I–VII 37
3.1 The Praefatio 37
3.2 The Lectures 40
3.2.1 Overview 40
3.2.2 The Three Modes of Life 43
3.2.3 The Virtues 47
3.2.4 The Powers of the Soul 50
3.2.5 Conclusion 53
4 Landino’s De anima 55
1 The Date of the Dialogue 55
2 Summary of the Dialogue 58
3 Terminology Used in the De anima 61
4 The Mind 68
5 The Virtues 76
6 The Appetite and Will 82
7 Aristotle, Albert, and Argyropoulos 84
8 Plato, Bessarion, and Albert 89
9 Conclusion 93
vi Contents
5 The Disputationes Camaldulenses Books I and II 94
1 Title and Overview 94
2 Otium and negotium 97
3 Landino and Thomas Aquinas 99
4 Whether otium or negotium Is Superior 104
5 Thomas, Ficino, and the Will 108
6 The Highest Good 111
7 Conclusion 116
6 The Disputationes Camaldulenses Books III and IV 118
1 Terminology 118
2 The Powers of the Rational Soul 122
3 The Reason, the Appetite, and Divine Illumination 126
4 Poetry 133
5 Virtue 136
6 The Virtues and Modes of Life 142
7 Conclusion 145
7 The 1488 Virgil Commentary 147
1 Overview 147
2 Comparing the Commentary with His Lectures 150
3 Poetry and Interpretation 160
4 The Aeneid Books VII–XII 163
8 The Commentary on Dante’s Comedy 166
1 The Homer-Virgil-Dante Line of Epic Poets 169
2 Influence of Ancient and Christian Thinkers 174
3 Modes of Life 178
4 The Powers of the Soul 183
5 Virtue 191
6 Divine Grace and Divine Illumination 195
7 Conclusion 199
9 Conclusion 201
Bibliography 209
Index 226
Acknowledgements
I should like to thank some people who have been very influential and gener-
ous over the years it has taken me to write this work. First and foremost I owe
a tremendous debt of gratitude to the late Ronald Witt. I was extremely fortu-
nate to be a graduate student of his at Duke University and my appreciation
for him is more than I can express. Unfortunately it has taken me over two de-
cades to finish this book and he did not live to see its completion. I would also
like to thank Craig Kallendorf of Texas A&M University for reading the manu-
script and encouraging its publication. He too has been very generous to me in
many ways over the years. The librarians at the Duke University and University
of North Carolina at Chapel Hill rare book collections were very helpful. Marie
Berry of Campbell University library tracked down many interlibrary loan re-
quests with great good will. Gina Peterman of Campbell greatly improved the
manuscript with her editing. Finally, I would like to thank my wife Barbara and
my children Benjamin and Elizabeth for making the years I have spent on this
book better than I could have imagined.
B.G.M.
Buies Creek, North Carolina
July, 2018