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History Renaissance

Erasmus on Literature

His Ratio or ‘System' of 1518/1519

edited by Mark Vessey

translated with commentary by Robert D. Sider

foreword by Anthony Grafton

Publisher
University of Toronto Press
Initial publish date
Apr 2021
Category
Renaissance, Theology, Renaissance
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9781487515836
    Publish Date
    Apr 2021
    List Price
    $34.95
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9781487522100
    Publish Date
    Apr 2021
    List Price
    $42.95
  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9781487502690
    Publish Date
    Apr 2021
    List Price
    $100.00

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Description

None of the works included among Erasmus’ ‘Literary and Educational Writings’ in the Collected Works of Erasmus captures his most adventurous thinking about how texts signify in – and thereby make or remake – worlds of thought, feeling, and action. The one that comes closest to doing so, the Ratio verae theologiae (‘A System of True Theology’), was first published separately in 1518 and 1519, then appeared in the preliminaries to the New Testament in Erasmus’ (revised) 1519 edition.

 

This handy Ratio or compendious ‘System’ gave advice on how to interpret complex texts and develop persuasive arguments based upon them. Its lessons were applied to the canonical Scriptures as source, and to everyday Christian theology as target discourse. They unfold in response to the special difficulties and incitements of the biblical text in Latin and Greek, within a framework provided by classical grammar and rhetoric, adjusted to the examples of the Church Fathers as exemplary interpreters of the Bible. At every turn, the Ratio reveals the instincts and intuitions of an exceptional theorist and practitioner of the cognitive, social, and political arts of written language. This student edition, the first of its kind in any language, is based on the translation and notes by Robert D. Sider in the Collected Works of Erasmus Volume 41. It is designed to make it easier to estimate the long-term value of this particular work and of Erasmus’ works more generally, and to allow for a multidisciplinary understanding of the lives of human beings as symbol-using creatures in worlds constructed partly by texts.

About the authors

Mark Vessey is a professor in the Department of English and Canada Research Chair in Literature / Christianity and Culture at the University of British Columbia.

 

Mark Vessey's profile page

Robert D. Sider is the Charles A. Dana Professor Emeritus of Classical Languages at Dickinson College and an adjunct professor in the Department of History at the University of Saskatchewan.

Robert D. Sider's profile page

Anthony Grafton is Henry Putnam University Professor of History at Princeton University.

Anthony Grafton's profile page

Editorial Reviews

“The need for an accessible version of this work has now been filled by this lucid translation which…These parerga make this volume useful to students and advanced researchers alike.”

<em>Erasmus Studies</em>

"Fans of Praise of Folly and the Colloquies ought to open Erasmus on Literature to see what and how Erasmus wanted them to read. Scholars of theology will scrutinize the edition carefully, as Erasmus’s contemporaries did. Seminaries in need of a book that teaches exegesis more thoroughly than Augustine now have one, ready for immediate use."

<em>Renaissance and Reformation</em>