Philology in Europe before and after 1800

Laura Loporcaro is a Postdoctoral Fellow at Ghent University. She works on classical Latin literature and on the history of philology between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, focusing particularly on the figure of Friedrich August Wolf (1759–1824). She is the author of Reading Quintilian. Didactic Authority in the Institutio oratoria (2025).Paul Michael Kurtz is an Associate Research Professor in History at Ghent University. A cultural, religious, and intellectual historian, he concentrates on the formation and circulation of knowledge about the ancient world both in and between Europe, the Middle East, and India from 1750 to 1950. His recent publications include Boschwitz on Wellhausen: The Life, Work, and Letters of a Jewish Scholar in Nazi Germany (2024).

• Introduction: Points and Periods in Philology PART 1 Questions 1.The Piety of Philology: Mosaic Authorship of the Pentateuch and Histories of Its Demise, ca. 1685– 1900 2. “La fureur d’innover”: Homer between Wolf, Villoison, and the Scholia 3. Vyasa, One or Many? The Question of Authorship of the Mahabharata in European Scholarship PART 2 Tools 4. The Latin Lexicon: Between Copia and Completeness 5. Continuity and Change in the Apparatus around 1850 6. The Grammar as a Philological Instrument: Some Reflections on Its Assets and Limitations PART 3 Communication 7. Timely or Timeless? Controversies on the Language of Scholarship ca. 1800 8. Translation, Classical Antiquity, and the Choice of Aeschylus in Italy and Beyond, ca. 1750–1850 9. Printing Capital: Knowledge Networks, Typographic Innovation, and the Languages of Colonialism in the Dutch East Indies PART 4 Communities 10. James Tod, His “Native Informants,” and Another Philology 11. Philologist Family Values: Arabists between Study and Community 12. Philology and Collegiality Afterword: Amnesia and the Apparatus – Looking Back for the Future of Philology