Introduction: Self-Portrait in Pen and Ink -- Ch. 1. 'A better portrait of Erasmus will his writings show': Fashioning the Figure -- Ch. 2. The In(de)scribable Aura of the Scholar-Saint in His Study: Erasmus's Life and Letters of Saint Jerome -- Ch. 3. Inventing Rudolph Agricola: Recovery and Transmission of the De inventione dialectica -- Ch. 4. Recovered Manuscripts and Second Editions: Staging the Book with the Castigatores -- Ch. 5. Reasoning Abundantly: Erasmus, Agricola, and Copia -- Ch. 6. Concentric Circles: Confected Correspondence and the Opus epistolarum Erasmi -- Conclusion: 'The name of Erasmus will never perish'
The name Erasmus of Rotterdam conjures up a golden age of scholarly integrity and the disinterested pursuit of knowledge, when learning could command public admiration without the need for authorial self-promotion. Lisa Jardine, however, shows that Erasmus self-consciously created his own reputation as the central figure of the European intellectual world. Erasmus himself-the historical as opposed to the figural individual-was a brilliant, maverick innovator, who achieved little formal academic recognition in his own lifetime. What Jardine offers here is not only a fascinating study of Erasmu
