Includes bibliographical references and index.

Front Matter -- Copyright Page -- Acknowledgements -- Illustrations -- Notes on the Editor -- Notes on Contributors -- Introduction / Eloisa Morra -- Boccaccio as Homer: A Recently Discovered Self-portrait and the ‘modern’ Canon / Maddalena Signorini -- In the Center of the Kaleidoscope: Ovidian Poetic Image and Boccaccio’s Self-Representation in De Mulieribus Claris / Talita Janine Juliani -- The Place of the Father: The Reception of Homer in the Renaissance Canon / Valentina Prosperi -- Politian: The Philologer as Artist / Jaspreet Boparai -- Humanistic Biographies of Horace and His Inclusion in the Fifteenth-century Literary Canon / Giacomo Comiati -- Editing Vernacular Classics in the Early Sixteenth Century: Ancient Models and Modern Solutions* / Carlo Caruso -- Building the Canon in 1530s Rome: Colocci’s epigrammatari as a Test Case / Nadia Cannata -- The Literary Canon and the Visual Arts: From the Three Crowns to Ariosto and Tasso / Federica Caneparo -- ‘Re-figuring’ Lucian of Samosata: Authorship and Literary Canon in Early Modern Italy / Irene Fantappiè -- Back Matter -- Index of Names.

Building the Canon through the Classics. Imitation and Variation in Renaissance Italy (1350-1580) provides a comprehensive reappraisal of the construction of a literary canon in Renaissance Italy by exploring the multiple reuses of classical authorities. The volume reshapes current debate on the notion of canon by intertwining two perspectives: analyzing when and in what form a canon emerged, and determining the ways in which an ancient literary canon interacts with the urge to bestow a similar authority on some later and contemporaneous authors. Each chapter makes an original contribution to its selected topic, but the collective strength of the volume relies on its simultaneous appeal to readers in Italian Studies, intellectual history, comparative studies and classical reception studies.