@article{925158,
      recid = {925158},
      author = {Poliziano, Angelo, and Dyck, Andrew R. and Cottrell, Alan},
      title = {Miscellanies /},
      pages = {2 volumes ;},
      abstract = {"Poliziano's chief claim to fame as a philologist rests  upon the work edited here, the Miscellanea, the first set  published in 1489, the second left unfinished at his death  and published for the first time in 1972. His essential  model was the Attic Nights of Aulus Gellius (2nd century  CE). Like Gellius, he produced individual chapters each on  a set topic and with a corresponding title, with the titles  listed at the beginning of the work as a guide to readers.  Another model was the Natural History of the Elder Pliny,  from which he borrowed the practice of listing at the  beginning the sources he had used in the course of the  project in order to ensure that the work would be taken  seriously and could not be readily dismissed. Like both  authors, he precedes the work with a Preface. In addition,  borrowing from and extending the usage of typographers of  his day, he added a coronis or tailpiece (which we might  call an "Epilogue") at the end of Century I, explaining the  history of the preceding text and taking a stand on rival  claims to priority. He does not explain exactly why he  chose one hundred as the number of chapters for each set of  the Miscellanea (several sets appear to have been planned  from an early stage). Possibly he used the practice of the  Greek paroemiographers as a model, who organized their  materials century by century. A miscellany was, in fact,  the perfect form for Poliziano because it enabled him to  range widely over ancient literature and culture with a  focus on particular problems, above all passages of ancient  authors that were obscure and/or had been wrongly explained  by predecessors, that seemed to contradict each other or  one's notion of an author's knowledge or competence. He was  able to bring to bear his wide reading of authors and  acquaintance with antiquities as well as his dialectical  skills to shed new light on many such issues. A typical  chapter of the Miscellanea begins with a problem Poliziano  has encountered, most frequently a particular passage of a  classical text that, on its face, does not make sense  grammatically, metrically, or in view of known facts about  the author or his society. Poliziano will quote the  offending passage together with previous attempts at  exegesis, if relevant. After showing these to be  inadequate, Poliziano proceeds to outline his solution and  how he arrived at it, often with copious citations of  parallel passages to illustrate the point of usage or the  particular content he is arguing for. He may conclude the  chapter with a brief summary, especially if the  argumentation has been involved, or with a kind of footnote  on some point of detail that he felt should be explained.  Occasionally, he will be moved to insert a kind of  editorial preface ahead of the treatment of the problem in  order to make a general point about scholarly procedure or  the like. A few of the chapters do not center on  philological problems at all but incorporate information  that he simply found interesting and wanted to share, such  as the disquisition on lime-tree bark (I 72), the report of  Severianus's views on the position of the sun and moon at  the creation (I 94), or the testimonies for the poet Erinna  (II 26). Some of his most striking contributions are, in  fact, the discoveries he presents"--},
      url = {http://library.usi.edu/record/925158},
}