2-1-Q Chapter 5
LIL 120 A – Fall 2024
Professor Cripps
2 – Offer 2 Specific Details from the chapter. For each ID/quote add 3-8 sentences of your own explanation.
“But the way Poggio fashioned letters showed more than just unusual skill in graphic design; it signaled a creative response to powerful cultural currents stirring in Florence and throughout Italy.” (pg. 116, para. 2, sentence 2). Throughout this chapter we see that Florence seems to be ahead of its time in resurfacing classical ideas and more epicurious ways, while still living a devoted Christian lifestyle. Then Poggio emerges with handwriting that allows readers to fully be able to decipher texts, which allows further discovery of their meaning. I think his writing had such a profound influence on society, as it illustrated the reemergence of humanist ideals that were lost many years ago. Humans tend to be curious in nature, so not being able to read a book/manuscript can become frustrating, especially for individuals who may not have the extensive literary knowledge like devoted scholars. Therefore, Poggio having that neat, simplistic, and spaced writing style, really opened the doors to more public access to knowledge. Still to this day, what is one thing many people like to hear in an educational/intellectual setting? “You have really nice handwriting.”
“Niccoli’s collection in Florence represented a very different impulse: not the accumulation of trophies but the loving appreciation of aesthetic objects.” (pg. 129, para. 2, last sentence). A lot of this chapter talks about Nioccolo Niccoli’s passion for ancient manuscripts and antiquities and his friendship with Poggio over shared interests. He even wrote a will to make his 800 manuscripts into a public library, bringing back a way of life that was destroyed when Christianity emerged. I think that this was super important for the development into society today because it laid the foundation for public access to classical knowledge. This became a crucial resource to the renaissance scholars during the time. And such preservation could later lead to classical works allowing for widespread study, influencing generations to come–potentially leading to the development of today.
1 – Make 1 Connection to Self, to World, or to Text – or Extended by offering a little detail about something mentioned in the text (some light research needed to Extend)
Connection to World: “The account cannot be taken seriously–it is one of the many libels that renaissance humanists, Poggio among them, hurled recklessly at one another, like punch-drunk pugilists.” In this part of the chapter, Greenblatt suggests that Renaissance scholars, including Poggio, engaged in heated, often irrational intellectual disputes, where insults and false accusations (libels) were thrown recklessly, much like exhausted fighters lashing out without much strategy or accuracy.
With the 2024 Election coming up, all I could think about was the presidential and vice presidential debate. On multiple occasions throughout my lifetime–as it is a recurring spectacle–I have witnessed presidential debates where the leader of the republican and democratic party sometimes threw baseless accusations and insults at one another for no reason other than to incite a rise out of their opponent. I have seen it more often in the past few years with Trump. I prefer not to share my political opinions, and I have no aversion to the republican party, but I have seen numerous times this year, Trump saying outrageous things without having compositive data. For instance the accusation of immigrants abducting people’s pets and eating them–proved to be a false accusation.
Q – Give us a Good Question to chew on – 1-3 sentences
Petrarch’s penchant for writing letters to dead classical writer Cicero: Page 119, paragraph 2.
Why was Petrarch obsessed with writing letters to dead classical writers, like Cicero? He knew they weren’t going to respond and the letters would just sit on his desk, so why was it so important that he wrote them?
