Itineraries of Thought in Renaissance Antiquarianism: The Atlas of Renaissance Antiquarianism [ATRA]

Our presentation will introduce a new digital humanities tool called ATRA – Atlas of Renaissance Antiquarianism -- a digital system that maps the circulation of antiquarian learning in sixteenth-century Europe.  ATRA allows the creation of new knowledge on antiquarian studies in the Renaissance.  It demonstrates how the antiquarian approach – one that based the growth of thought on documented sources and empirical evidence – played a primary role in the evolution of cultural and intellectual life in the Early Modern period. The ATRA database gathers and connects the published and unpublished letters of humanists and scholars who participated in spreading the antiquarian method. It includes materials in Latin, Italian, French, Spanish, collected from all regions of Europe. Antiquarian erudition by nature connects many different disciplines, and ATRA highlights these connections.  In this way, it covers all aspects of Renaissance antiquarian learning and allows recreation of scholarly networks.  Connecting data in this way enables the discovery of new cultural itineraries and convergences in Renaissance scholarship.  It traces the paths that led to parallel or independent ideas and uncovers new trends of thought that can help us better understand the evolution of new ideas and attitudes that we associate with the Renaissance. Innovative and revolutionary interpretative pathways will come to light, conferring a renewed awareness of the concept of Renaissance antiquarianism and offering new tools with which to investigate the History of Ideas.

Damiano Acciarino is a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Università Ca' Foscari di Venezia.  He is the author of Lettere sulle Grottesche (Rome, 2018) and De' Conviti degli Antichi.  Opera despota (Padua, 2012) and editor of the essay collection Paradigms of Renaissance Grotesques (Toronto, 2019).

Giovanni Grandi has published several articles on the Renaissance tradition of Catullus.  He is part of the ATRA team, for which he has compiled more than 1000 entires.  

To attend this lecture, please RSVP to italian.studies@utoronto.ca with your name.  You will receive an email one day before the event containing access information to the lecture and other event details.

All times stated in Eastern Time.