Pietro Bembo and Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola: letters on imitation

All scholars of Italian literature know what a decisive role the publication of Pietro Bembo‘s Prose della volgar lingua (1525) played in the history of literary Italian. However, perhaps not everyone knows that many of the themes discussed in this work were already the subject of an important exchange of letters between Pietro Bembo and Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola around 1515.

The first German translation of this correspondence, written in Latin, is now available in the Bibliotheca Neolatina published by Manutius Verlag Heidelberg.

These letters are a fundamental programmatic text on the question of imitation of ancient authors. The theses formulated therein were received not only in Italy but throughout the humanistic world. The present edition contains the three letters in the version of the first edition and the German translation. The introduction presents the two correspondents and places the epistolary debate in its historical context.

Bibliotheca Neolatina – Volume 14

Gianfrancesco Pico Della Mirandola / Pietro Bembo

De imitatione / Letters on Imitation

edited by Rafael Arnold and Christiane Reitz, with translation and commentary

https://www.manutius-verlag.de/index.php/humanistische-texte