The Elder Pliny's Natural History is one of the largest and most extraordinary works to survive from antiquity. It has often been referred to as an encyclopedia, usually without full awareness of ...what such a characterisation implies. In this book, Dr Doody examines this concept and its applicability to the work, paying far more attention than ever before to the varying ways in which it has been read during the last two thousand years, especially by Francis Bacon and Denis Diderot. This book makes a major contribution not just to the study of the Elder Pliny but to our understanding of the cultural processes of ordering knowledge widespread in the Roman Empire and to the reception of classical literature and ideas.
The Naturalis historia by Pliny the Elder provided Renaissance scholars, artists and architects with details of ancient architectural practice and long-lost architectural wonders - material that was ...often unavailable elsewhere in classical literature. Pliny's descriptions frequently included the dimensions of these buildings, as well as details of their unusual construction materials and ornament. This book describes, for the first time, how the passages were interpreted from around 1430 to 1580, that is, from Alberti to Palladio. Chapters are arranged chronologically within three interrelated sections - antiquarianism; architectural writings; drawings and built monuments - thereby making it possible for the reader to follow the changing attitudes to Pliny over the period. The resulting study establishes the Naturalis historia as the single most important literary source after Vitruvius's De architectura.
Pliny's Naturalis Historia - a brilliant and sophisticated encyclopaedia of the scientific, artistic, philosophical, botanical and zoological riches of the ancient world - has had a long career in ...the footnotes of historical studies. This is a phenomenon born of the sense that the work was there to consult, or to 'use', as a resource to aid investigation of specific technical issues or passages, of Quellenforschung, or of delimited topic areas. The contributors to the present volume both represent and join a new generation of critics who have begun to try to 'read' this monumental text, and - by examining the dominant motifs which give shape and order to the work - to construct frameworks within which we may understand and interpret Pliny's overarching agenda.
Las enmiendas del Pinciano (Hernán Núñez de Guzmán) a la obra de Plinio el Viejo supusieron en su época una revolución filológica a la que se fueron acogiendo diversos editores. Sin embargo, su ...empleo para las ediciones dista de ser uniforme. Algunas de sus propuestas, hoy aceptadas, cuentan con atribuciones erróneas y permanecen silenciadas, mientras que otras, que pueden proporcionar soluciones plausibles para pasajes controvertidos, cayeron en el olvido a raíz de un uso indirecto e incompleto de las mismas. En el presente artículo ubicamos las Obseruationes in loca obscura aut deprauata historiae naturalis (Salamanca, 1544-1545) en un contexto más amplio de comentaristas y recopilamos una selección de los mayores aciertos que contienen, junto con una relación de nuevas propuestas para replantear el contenido de diversos pasajes.
One of the earliest surviving examples of 'art history', Pliny the Elder's 'chapters on art' form part of his encyclopaedic Natural History, completed shortly before its author died during the ...eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79. This important new work reassesses Pliny's discussion of art, revealing how art is used to expound the Roman imperial agenda which dominates the work as a whole.
Pliny's Naturalis Historia is a sophisticated encyclopaedia of the riches of the ancient world. The contributors to the present volume represent and join a new generation of critics who have begun to ...examine the dominant motifs which give shape to the work.
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