2011-2012 - The Italian Academy - Columbia University

Fellows’ Reports
Renata Ago
First of all, the semester at the Italian Academy gave me the opportunity
to reflect, discuss with the other Fellows and further elaborate
the notion of “persona” as defined by Daston and Sibum in relation
to science and scientists. Adopting the idea of “persona” as a sort of
abstract character constructed through both individual biographies
and the institutionalization of personal experiences, I could frame
a theoretical tool, which is helping me to deal with the singular
experiences of a certain number of individuals and, at the same time,
with the common features that characterized many of their actions
and choices (intellectual options, material culture, testamentary
dispositions, etc.), without sacrificing either the singular plan or the
collective one.
I then focused on the role played by individual and especially
collective biographies in constructing the kind of “personae” I
am trying to identify, that is the seventeenth-century “excellent
personae” boasting the superior dignity of their cultural expertise
and consequently their own reputation and distinguished social
status. As a literary genre, collective biographies became particularly
popular in the 15 th century, when new Latin translations of
both Plutarch and Laertius were made available by the joint efforts
of humanists and publishers. Together with the lives of emperors,
great captains and politicians, the public was presented with those
of poets, philosophers, orators, and the like, in a conscious attempt
to establish poetry, philosophy, rhetoric, etc., as noble arts, and
those who practiced them as noble men.
The rediscovery of the lives of ancient great men called for further
developments of the literary genre that was gradually extended
to modern illustrious men. These enterprises were often carried on
with the aim of celebrating the greatness of a city and, quite typically,
poets and artists were generally biographied together with politicians
and orators. In a few cases, though, the aim was specifically to
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