Literary Forgery in Early Modern Europe, 1450–1800: Literary Forgery in Early Modern Europe, 1450–1800 - Rilegato

"A mature and wide-ranging reflection on the subject of literary forgery that demonstrates how the field might be developed in future years, this book offers privileged insights into the perennial feature of human inventiveness and perversity that is literary forgery. All the contributions are hugely entertaining and illuminate different sectors of the topic in a way which is very satisfying."

"When does invention become fraud? Is it the author or the reader who perpetrates the falsehood? Tackling ghosts and impostures, texts manufactured to mislead, and historical writers made to speak falsely, this wonderful collection tastes the ripest fruits engineered for a new field of early modern study: the Bibliotheca Fictiva."

"The essays gathered in this volume demonstrate that studying early modern European literary forgeries is a fascinating cultural adventure. Forged documents from the weighty tomes of Annius of Viterbo to the letter of the Virgin Mary for the citizens of Messina showed that forgeries were capable of representing a surprising variety of polemics."

"Just as we can't help but admire the con artist's stings and scams, so readers of this wide-ranging collection of papers will take pleasure in discovering―thanks to the investigations of these learned academic Sherlocks―not only the ingenuity and chutzpah of some notable Renaissance forgers but also the possible reasons behind their impostures."

"Literary Forgery provides a fascinating meditation upon the proliferation of spurious early modern documents that invented elements of the classical and medieval past and embellished aspects of the early modern world. Filled with deeply researched case studies of forgers and forgeries, this delightful volume explores the fluidity of fact and fiction. Welcome to the early modern 'House of Forgery'!"

"Fake news is old news. That's the testimony of this fascinating collection headlined by the world's greatest experts on learned and literary duplicity. Packed with erudition and up-to-date detective work, this book is also great fun."

Why was the Renaissance also the golden age of forgery?