CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2026
| Author | Avram, Antonia-oana |
|---|---|
| Title | Negotiating Meaning in Humanist Political Discourse Authorial Agency and Organization of Knowledge in Francesco Sansovino and Scipione Ammirato |
| Summary | This thesis investigates the interplay between authorial agency, editorial intervention, and the material form of texts by examining the works of two sixteenth-century Italian humanists, Francesco Sansovino and Scipione Ammirato. It asks how meaning in political discourse was negotiated in a world where textual production was collective, shaped by printers, patrons, and institutions, and where rhetorical strategies and methods of organizing knowledge were central to the formation of political thought. By analyzing their practices of compilation, paratextual intervention, rhetorical adaptation, and organization of knowledge, this study shows how humanists actively fashioned their authorial roles and constructed meaning in a competitive literary market shaped by privileges, censorship, and patronage. Drawing on printed works, manuscript notebooks, contracts, privileges, paratexts, and correspondence, it explores how both humanists navigated the Venetian and Florentine book markets and patronage networks. The thesis consists of three parts. Part I examines how both Sansovino and Ammirato established and maintained authorial agency through privileges, dedications, and rhetorical strategies, showing how Sansovino emphasized his role as a compiler and editor while Ammirato presented himself as a writer, historian and political thinker. Part II analyzes methods of organizing knowledge, highlighting Sansovino’s use of paratextual frameworks and Ammirato’s use and transformation of private commonplace books into public discourse. Part III tied these practices to the audiences, aims, and conditions under which political-historical works were produced and circulated. The thesis demonstrates, first, that authorial agency in sixteenth-century Italy was not singular but a multitude of roles that humanists strategically performed in multiple textual, paratextual and material contexts. Second, it shows that practices of compilation, organization, and rhetorical adaptation were constitutive of political thought. Third, it shows how Sansovino and Ammirato exemplify two complementary models of how meaning was negotiated in early modern political thought: one through editorial practices and comparative approach, the other through historical examples and a flexible generic portrayal of the good ruler. |
| Supervisor | Hennings, Jan; Kontler, László |
| Department | Historical Studies PhD |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2026/avram_antonia-oana.pdf |
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