Prof. Francesco Guardiani: "Apostles of Modernity: Italian Jesuits As Agents of the Gutenberg Revolution."

The 52nd Season of the Toronto Renaissance and Reformation Colloquium, founded by Natalie Zemon David and James K. McConia in 1964, is now underway.

This talk opens with the dramatic, self-imposed, rational, modern guidelines for self-analysis of Ignatius’s autobiography and letters; it then touches briefly on the practical, didactic side of the Spiritual Exercises, turned educational exercises with Claudio Acquaviva’s 1599 Ratio studiorum; and then presents a number of “apostles of modernity,” Italian missionaries who used that book and its innovative modern function of cultural emancipation in East Asia and in the Americas.

Francesco Guardiani teaches at St. Michael’s College in the University of Toronto. He has authored or edited a number of books and articles dealing with various aspects and periods of Italian literature, but with a preference for the Baroque. Among his books are La meravigliosa retorica dell’Adone di G.B. Marino (1989); Lectura Marini, venti saggi di diversi sui venti canti dell' "Adone" (as editor, 1989); The Sense of Marino: Literature Fine Arts and Music of the Italian Baroque (as editor, 1994); and Going for Baroque: Cultural Transformations 1550-1650 (as editor, 1999). He recently edited Francesco Giuseppe Bressani’s Breve relatione (2011).

Get all the details on this event poster (PDF).