Logodaedalus: Word Histories of Ingenuity in Early Modern Europe - Hardcover

Marr, Alexander; Garrod, Raphaële; Marcaida, José Ramón; Oosterhoff, Richard J.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 082294541X ISBN 13: 9780822945413

Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019

Synopsis

Before Romantic genius, there was ingenuity. Early modern ingenuity defined every person―not just exceptional individuals―as having their own attributes and talents, stemming from an “inborn nature” that included many qualities, not just intelligence. Through ingenuity and its family of related terms, early moderns sought to understand and appreciate differences between peoples, places, and things in an attempt to classify their ingenuities and assign professions that were best suited to one’s abilities. Logodaedalus, a prehistory of genius, explores the various ways this language of ingenuity was defined, used, and manipulated between 1470 and 1750. By analyzing printed dictionaries and other lexical works across a range of languages―Latin, Italian, Spanish, French, English, German, and Dutch―the authors reveal the ways in which significant words produced meaning in history and found expression in natural philosophy, medicine, natural history, mathematics, mechanics, poetics, and artistic theory.

About this title

About the Author

Alexander Marr is Reader in the History of Early Modern Art at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Trinity Hall.

Raphaële Garrod is associate professor in early modern French at the University of Oxford and a fellow of Magdalen College. She is the author of Cosmographical Novelties: Dialectic and Discovery in French Renaissance Prose.

Jose Ramón Marcaida is Lecturer in Art History at the University of St Andrews, UK.

Richard J. Oosterhoff is Lecturer in Early Modern history at the University of Edinburgh, UK.

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Introduction
 
In the revised edition of Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society, Raymond Williams offered a pithy, twenty-two-line entry for &;genius.&;  Noting the English word&;s origin in the identical Latin term, he observed that &;the development towards the dominant modern meaning of [genius as] &;extraordinary ability&; is complex; it occurred, interactively, in both English and French and later in German.&;[1]  The present book takes a first step towards charting that complex history by examining the fortunes of words used in early modernity to denote the qualities that would coalesce into something more-or-less recognisable as the modern notion of genius.  While this modern notion is as capacious and contested as its earlier counterparts, it conjures up associations with exceptionality that include outstanding creativity and intelligence, inborn brilliance, charisma, and a social and psychological disposition that is outside the norm.[2] By comparison, early modern ingenuity was often described as an inborn power brought out by training and industry, which could be affected by environment.  Ingenuity, in its highest form, often manifested as sharp wit, fine skill, quick thinking and swift execution. 
By looking to early modern ingenuity, this book seeks to offer (to borrow Terence Cave&;s term) a &;prehistory&; of genius before Romanticism, suspending belief in the teleology of the modern concept by excavating the language used to define and express a set of meanings in flux.[3]  In so doing we write against the flow of history and modern disciplinary boundaries, moving backwards

 

[1] Raymond Williams, Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), 143.  &;Genius&; is one of twenty-one terms Williams introduced or modified since the publication of the first edition in 1976.

[2] There is a vast literature on Romantic- and post-Romantic genius.  Significant studies include James Engell, The Creative Imagination: Enlightenment to Romanticism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981); Jochen Schmidt, Die Geschichte des Genie-Gedankens in der deutschen Literatur, Philosophie und Politik, 1750-1945 (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1985); Darrin M. McMahon, Divine Fury: A History of Genius (New York: Basic Books, 2013); Ann Jefferson, Genius in France: An Idea and Its Uses (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014).

[3] See Terence Cave, Pre-histories, 2 vols. (Geneva: Droz, 1999-2001).  Richard Scholar, The Je-Ne-Sais-Quoi in Early Modern Europe: Encounters with a Certain Something (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005) uses a similar approach (see esp. 6).  On Cave&;s methods, see Neil Kenny and Wes Williams, &;Introduction,&; in Terence Cave, Retrospectives: Essays in Literature, Poetics and Cultural History, ed. Neil Kenny and Wes Williams (Oxford: Legenda, 2009).

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
• Publication date: 2019
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 082294541X
• ISBN 13: 9780822945413
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 352