Author: Ianziti, Gary
Title: A Life in Politics: Leonardo Bruni’s Cicero
Review/Collection: Journal of the History of Ideas, Volume 61, Number 1
Year edition: 2000
Pages: 39-58
Keywords: Biographie - Biografia - Biography, Héritage - Fortuna - Legacy
Description: Abstract] Leonardo Bruni's Life of Cicero deserves to occupy an important place in the annals of early modern history-writing. Completed in October 1415, the Cicero marks a turning point in Bruni's career. It represents his first major foray into the field of historiography, preceding by a few months his completion of the first book of the more famous History of Florence. The Cicero contains many of the features upon which Bruni's reputation as a historian was later to be based. It is written in concise, elegant Latin; it demonstrates a high degree of sophistication in its handling of a wide range of source material; it reveals the workings of a mature, critical intelligence capable of formulating judgments that often go against the grain of accumulated tradition. Nor should we be surprised that Bruni's breakthrough into such territory took place within the framework of biography. Since the time of Petrarch, life-writing had been practiced by Italian humanists as the preferred form of historical composition. Bruni's mentor Coluccio Salutati was a devotee of the genre, and Bruni himself served his apprenticeship in history-writing by translating seven of Plutarch's Lives between 1405 and 1412. Bruni's Cicero was an immediate success in its own day. [PhR] [Bio] G. Ianziti est Assoc. Prof. A Queensland University of Technology (BA San Francisco, MA PhD NCarolina, Dottorato di Ricerca Pisa). Il s’intéresse notamment à l’histoire italienne, et a écrit sur la Renaissance ('Storici, mandanti, materiali nella Milano sforzesca, 1450-1480', in Il principe e la storia, a cura di Tina Matarrese e Cristina Montagnani (Novara: Interlinea edizioni, 2005), pp. 465-485 - 'From Praise to Prose: Leonardo Bruni's Lives of the Poets', I Tatti Studies, vol. 10 (2005), pp. 127-148) [
Author initials: Ianziti 2000
Title: A Life in Politics: Leonardo Bruni’s Cicero
Review/Collection: Journal of the History of Ideas, Volume 61, Number 1
Year edition: 2000
Pages: 39-58
Keywords: Biographie - Biografia - Biography, Héritage - Fortuna - Legacy
Description: Abstract] Leonardo Bruni's Life of Cicero deserves to occupy an important place in the annals of early modern history-writing. Completed in October 1415, the Cicero marks a turning point in Bruni's career. It represents his first major foray into the field of historiography, preceding by a few months his completion of the first book of the more famous History of Florence. The Cicero contains many of the features upon which Bruni's reputation as a historian was later to be based. It is written in concise, elegant Latin; it demonstrates a high degree of sophistication in its handling of a wide range of source material; it reveals the workings of a mature, critical intelligence capable of formulating judgments that often go against the grain of accumulated tradition. Nor should we be surprised that Bruni's breakthrough into such territory took place within the framework of biography. Since the time of Petrarch, life-writing had been practiced by Italian humanists as the preferred form of historical composition. Bruni's mentor Coluccio Salutati was a devotee of the genre, and Bruni himself served his apprenticeship in history-writing by translating seven of Plutarch's Lives between 1405 and 1412. Bruni's Cicero was an immediate success in its own day. [PhR] [Bio] G. Ianziti est Assoc. Prof. A Queensland University of Technology (BA San Francisco, MA PhD NCarolina, Dottorato di Ricerca Pisa). Il s’intéresse notamment à l’histoire italienne, et a écrit sur la Renaissance ('Storici, mandanti, materiali nella Milano sforzesca, 1450-1480', in Il principe e la storia, a cura di Tina Matarrese e Cristina Montagnani (Novara: Interlinea edizioni, 2005), pp. 465-485 - 'From Praise to Prose: Leonardo Bruni's Lives of the Poets', I Tatti Studies, vol. 10 (2005), pp. 127-148) [
Author initials: Ianziti 2000
