Hermannus Schottennius Hessus. Confabulationes tironum litterariorum (Cologne, 1525). Edited by Peter Macardle.

Gutes Exemplar; der illustr. Einband stw. geringf�gig berieben. - Englisch; Latein. - The humanist Hermann Schotten, or Hermannus Schottennius Hessus (ca. 1503-1546), student, schoolmaster, and university lecturer in Cologne, was the author of a number of works on humanist pedagogy. His Confabulationes tironum litterariorum of 1525, a collection of Latin dialogues designed to help schoolboys to master Classical Latin conversation, was written in admiring imitation of the colloquies of Erasmus. But Schotten had his own distinctive style, a natural ear for dialogue, and a sympathetic understanding of the schoolboy world; as a result he produced one of the liveliest pedagogical works of the century, and one which is also a vivid and valuable cultural document of life in the early modern metropolis of Cologne. This critical edition of the Confabulationes, the first since the sixteenth century, makes this onetime best-seller (reprinted almost sixty times) available and comprehensible to modern readers. It presents the Latin text, a full English translation, extensive notes on the language and on Schotten's many literary and cultural allusions, and a detailed investigation of the early printing history of the collection. // Peter Macardle lectures in German in the School of Modern Languages and Cultures, Durham University. He is the author of a number of studies on German and Latin writing and culture of the late-medieval and early modern periods. (Verlagstext) // INHALT : Non-Bibliographic Abbreviations ------ Acknowledgements ------ Introduction ------ Hermannus Schottennius Hessus: Life and Work ------ The Editions of the Confabulationes ------ The Earliest Printings of the Confabulationes ------ Text Edition of the Confabulationes ------ Editorial Principles and Conventions ------ The Colloquies ------ The Conuiuia ------ Notes on the Colloquies and Conuiuia ------ Notes on the Colloquies ------ Notes on the Conuiuia ------ Index of Schotten's Non-Classical Latin ------ Select Bibliography. // Some time in the earlier part of 1525 there appeared a collection of Latin colloquies, dialogues designed to teach Latin to schoolboys. The Confabulationes tironum litter-ariorum contained one hundred and twenty-three short dialogues covering a wide range of topics and conversational situations. It was composed in a humanist Classical Latin, modelled mainly on the racy but elegant colloquial language of Terence. Its author, Hermannus Schottennius Hessus or Hermann Schotten, was still unknown to the literary world: he was perhaps about twenty-two, and at the time was a schoolmaster at a 'trivial' school, a grammar school, somewhere in the city of Cologne. This new colloquy collection was entirely in the spirit of the humanist pedagogy which was establishing itself at the leading schools in Germany and the Netherlands. It took its place amongst a number of extant prestigious collections such as those of Erasmus, Petrus Mosellanus, Christoph Hegendorff and Hadrianus Barlandus. But Schotten had a distinctive voice, and his Confabulationes were refreshingly different from what had gone before and what would come after. They were an instant success. The edition which has up till now been regarded as the princeps (Augsburg: S. Ruff, 1525) was in fact very likely a pirated version of a now lost Cologne first edition (see section Ic). An expanded Cologne second edition which appeared in 1526 was enthusiastically reprinted in Germany and farther afield. By the end of the sixteenth century, fifty-seven editions are recorded; no doubt there were even more, some of which have not survived. � (S. 1) ISBN 0907310680