Networking through Biography

Constructing Intellectual Junctions in Antiquity, the Renaissance and the Arabo-Islamic World

edited by Arjan Post, Geert Roskam, Stefan Schorn, Joseph Verheyden and Pietro Zaccaria

Book cover: Networking through Biography

Extent: 460 pages

Publisher: Brepols Publishers

Subjects: Early Modern & Renaissance Studies, Islamic & Middle Eastern Studies, Medieval Studies

Series: Lectio

Series volume number: 19

Language: Arabic

Hardback (Published)

(March 2026)

ISBN: 9782503620008

Price: $157.00

In stock

This volume explores the networking function of biographical literature written in Greco-Roman antiquity, the Italian Renaissance and the Arabic Middle Period


Networking through Biography. Constructing Intellectual Junctions in Antiquity, the Renaissance and the Arabo-Islamic World collects thirteen contributions exploring various ways in which biography was used to create and modify intellectual networks in Greco-Roman antiquity, the Italian Renaissance and the Arabic Middle Period. The volume examines not only biographies in the proper sense of the term, but also other forms of biographical discourse, such as encyclopedias, historical works and autobiographies. The essays deal with biographies of a wide range of persons, including poets, politicians, semi-mythical lawgivers, philosophers, rhetoricians, Christian theologians, and Islamic scholars. By detecting parallel developments and different or similar networking strategies, the diachronic approach taken in the present volume reveals specific characteristics of networking through biography in different intellectual and literary traditions, showing that creating intellectual networks was an important, sometimes even the central, function of biographical writing.

  • Edited by Geert Roskam
  • Edited by Stefan Schorn
  • Edited by Joseph Verheyden
  • Edited by Pietro Zaccaria
  • Edited by Arjan Post