Research Blog
Renaissance Editing Workshop, organised by Liam Lewis and Paloma Perez Galvan
The Renaissance Editing Workshop was a half-day event on 26 May 2017 in the Wolfson Research Exchange designed to act as both an introduction to different styles of editing, as well as a focused group to discuss Renaissance editing practices. Three presentations by Prof. Ingrid De Smet (Centre for the Study of the Renaissance, Warwick), Dr. Dario Brancato (Concordia University, Montreal), and Dr. Giacomo Comiati (Centre for the Study of the Renaissance, Warwick) provided introductions to some of the questions and theoretical issues raised by editing practices for Renaissance texts. Topics included: the ways that commentaries in critical editions might be constructed, with a focus on an edition of Jacques Auguste de Thou's didactic poem on falconry; the various audience of critical editions of texts including Giovanni Della Casa's Latin poems; and how we as scholars can distinguish the authorial intention from editorial intentions, specifically in the case of Cosimo de’ Medici and Baccio Baldini’s ‘edition’ of Benedetto Varchi’s Storia Fiorentina. The second-half of the workshop focused on precise case-studies, and the participants engaged with their chosen topics in more depth. Group discussion raised the issues of how each of the speakers would edit certain portions of the original text. In this part of the workshop participants could envisage how difficult it can be to make a critical edition of a Renaissance text. Workshop members and speakers enjoyed engaging with the topic and were very active in discussion sessions. The speakers themselves also provided positive feedback about the workshop, noting that it was an interesting and stimulating seminar and that the event encouraged fruitful discussion.