Falsifications and Authority in Antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance
Abstract
Confronted with the shifting idea of the authority of a text and its transmission and reception in a variety of genres, settings and contexts, this collective volume envisages to enlarge and deepen our understanding of these notions by tangling literary forgery and emulation. Authority and authoritative literary productions provoke all kinds of interest and emulation. Hermeneutical techniques, detailed exegesis and historical critique are invoked to put authority, and indeed also possible falsifications, to the test. Scholars from various disciplines working on texts, either authoritative or forged, and stemming from different periods of time, reflect on these topics on a methodological basis and from a hermeneutical entrance. In doing so, a threefold axis for questioning the phenomenon is proposed, namely the motif of falsification, the mechanism or technique applied, and the direct or indirect effect of this fraud.
