Kulturtransfer in der frühen Neuzeit

Sabine Vogel studies the Renaissance as a process of mediation in which the previous knowledge and the intentions of the recipients affected the prevailing conception of antiquity. Using random samples from the books produced in Lyons, she analyzes those aspects of humanistic thought and of the legacy of antiquity which the Lyons publishers offered their customers in compilations, textbooks and reference books. The author shows that apart from the professional scholars there was a French readership with its own intellectual image. This readership was so well-established that it had been given its own name: bons esprits. The publishers of Lyons produced compendia in French which contained a very reduced form of humanistic scholarship supplemented by medieval and contemporary knowledge for these readers.