Book Description

Excerpt from Literary Patronage in the Middle Ages: A Thesis, in English Patronage, then, arises from this development of individual appreciation of art side by side with public appreciation of it, and is one of the early author's means of remuneration - alas, often the only one. Hence, patronage, as we shall treat it, deals essentially with the economic phase of the literary profession. In conditions of wide distribution of wealth and power, as in an cient Greece, genius is patronized by the public, and Pindar and Herodotus, decreed handsome gifts by the vote of the Athenian citizens, could be independent of individual benefactors, but with such conditions as prevailed under the early Ptolemies at Alexandria, under Augustus at Rome, and notably in Renais sance Italy, patrons of literature were a necessity - and it is only just' to say that leaders of small wealthy cultured groups, willing to gratify their literary tastes by munificent payment for the luxury, have caused literary genius to flourish at least as well as in communities of less concentrated culture. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.