Sperone Speroni and the Debate over Sophistry in the Italian Renaissance (Brill's Studies in Intellectual History)

In 'Sperone Speroni and the Debate over Sophistry in the Italian Renaissance' Teodoro Katinis mines a number of little or unstudied primary sources and offers the first book on the rebirth of ancient sophists in the Italian literature of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, from Leonardo Bruni to Jacopo Mazzoni, with a focus on the Italian writer and philosopher Sperone Speroni (1500-1588). Katinis convincingly argues that Speroni is a unique case of an early modern thinker who explicitly rejected Plato’s demonization and defended the public role of the sophistic rhetoric, which enhanced the debate over the sophistic arts and scepticism in a variety of fields and anticipated some of the most revolutionary modern thoughts. Contents 9 Preface 11 Acknowledgments 12 Introduction 15 Chapter 1 Fifteenth-century Perspectives on Ancient Sophists 23 1.1 The Ancients and the Humanists 23 1.2 Gorgias Redivivus 25 1.3 Protagoras and Humanist Literature 30 1.4 Marsilio Ficino’s Interpretation of Sophists 34 1.5 Toward the 16th Century 48 Chapter 2 Speroni and the Sophists 50 2.1 Orator et Philosophus 50 2.2 Defense and Rehabilitation of Sophistry 53 2.3 The Dialogo della retorica 80 Chapter 3 Speroni’s Practice of Sophistic Rhetoric 89 3.1 From Theory to Practice 89 3.2 Antilogies 90 3.3 Rhetoric in Dialogues 104 Chapter 4 The Debate on Dante and Sophistic Poetry 120 4.1 Looking at the Debate on Dante from a New Perspective 120 4.2 Tasso’s Concern about Poetry: An Overview of the Late Cinquecento 121 4.3 Crafting Idols: Jacopo Mazzoni’s Poetics 125 4.4 Dante among Sophists and Skeptics 132 4.5 Ut Pictura Poesis: Mazzoni, Speroni, Comanini 138 Conclusion 151 Appendix: Two Trattatelli of Speroni for Sophistry 163 Bibliography 175 Index of Names 187 In 'Sperone Speroni and the Debate over Sophistry in the Italian Renaissance' Teodoro Katinis mines a number of little or unstudied primary sources and offers the first book on the rebirth of ancient sophists in the Italian literature of the 15th and 16th century, from Leonardo Bruni to Jacopo Mazzoni, with a focus on the Italian writer and philosopher Sperone Speroni (1500-1588). Katinis convincingly proves that Speroni is a unique case of early modern thinker who explicitly rejected Plato?s demonization and defended the public role of the sophistic rhetoric, which enhanced the debate over the sophistic arts and scepticism in a variety of fields and anticipated some of the most revolutionary modern thoughts