More than 35 scholars and researchers from Europe and the United States gathered last weekend at CEU for the 4th Graduate Conference in European History (GRACEH) to discuss challenges of biographical writing and scholarship.
The course offers a critical reading of a genre – that is the “biography” – already cultivated during the Renaissance, and also deals with the historiography of this popular genre by looking at certain works written on Renaissance characters. The context of discussions are twofold: on the one hand, that is the “Renaissance humanism,” the well-known historiographical construction and contemporary practice, on the other hand, the late medieval and early modern Republic of Letters, a lesser-known network of scholars, humanist and literati. Life-stories and self-fashioning, construction of charisma and presentation of self will be discussed by using 14-17th examples and case studies of recent scholarship in order to handle better the methodological approaches and “tools”.
