Helping San Diego, California and beyond since 1997.
Do you need
volunteer, community service, work, military or court hours?
|
|
Helping San Diego, California and beyond since 1997.
|
|
Click here and add this page to your favorites!
|
Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: RHY-RON |
|
|
RITSCHL, FRIEDRICH WILHELM (1806-1876) , German scholar, was born in 18o6 in Thuringia. His family, in which culture and poverty were hereditary, were Protestants who had migrated several generations earlier from Bohemia. Ritschl was fortunate in his school training, at a time when the great reform in the higher schools of Prussia had not yet been thoroughly carried out. His chief
Leipzig
Halle
gift for instilling into his pupils his own ardour for classical study. The great controversy between the " Realists " and the " Verbalists " was then at its height, and Ritschl naturally sided with Hermann against Boeckh. The early death of Reisig in 1828 did not sever Ritschl from Halle
ordinary " professor in 1834, and held other offices. The great event of Ritschl's life was a sojourn of nearly a year in Italy (1836-37), spent in libraries and museums, and more particularly in the laborious examination of the Ambrosian palimpsest of Plautus at Milan. The remainder of his life was largely occupied in working out the material then gathered and the ideas then conceived. Bonn, whither he removed on his marriage in 1839, and where he remained for twenty-six years, was the great scene of his activity both as scholar and as teacher. The philological seminary which he controlled, although nominally only joint-director with Welcker, became a veritable officina litterarum, a kind of Isocratean school of classical study; in it were trained many of the fore-most scholars of the last forty years. The names of Georg Curtius, Ihne, Schleicher, Bernays, Ribbeck, Lorenz, Vahlen, Hubner, Biicheler, Helbig, Benndorf, Riese, Windisch, who were his pupils either at Bonn or at Leipzig
Ritschl's character was strongly marked. The spirited element
administration of the university library at Bonn, and by the sight years of labour which carried to success a work of infinite complexity, the famous Priscae Latinitatis Monumenta Epigraphica (Bonn, 186z). This volume presents in admirable acsimile, with prefatory notices and indexes, the Latin inscriptions from the earliest times to the end of the republic. It forms an introductory volume to the Berlin Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, the excellence of which is largely due to the precept and example of Ritschl, though he had no hand in the later volumes. The results of Ritschl's life are mainly gathered up in a long series of monographs, for the most part of the highest finish, and rich in ideas which have leavened the scholarship of the time.As a scholar, Ritschl was of the lineage of Bentley, to whom he looked up, Iike Hermann, with fervent admiration. His best efforts were spent in studying the languages and literatures of Greece and Rome, rather than the life of the Greeks and Romans. He was sometimes, but most unjustly, charged with taking a narrow view of " Philologie." That he keenly appreciated the importance of ancient institutions and ancient art both his published papers and the records of his lectures amply testify. He devoted himself for the most part to the study of ancient poetry, and in particular of the early Latin drama. This formed the centre from which his investigations radiated. Starting from this he ranged over the whole remains of pre-Ciceronian Latin, and not only analysed but augmented the sources from which our knowledge of it must come. Before Ritschl the acquaintance of scholars with early Latin was so dim and restricted that it would perhaps be hardly an exaggeration to call him its real discoverer. To the world in general Ritschl was best known as a student of Plautus. He cleared away the accretions of ages, and by efforts of that real genius which goes hand in hand with labour, brought to light many of the true features of the original
In conjectural criticism Ritschl was inferior not only to his great predecessors but to some of his contemporaries. His imagination was in this field (but in this field only) hampered by erudition, and his judgment was unconsciously warped by the desire to find in his text illustrations of his discoveries. But still a fair
the art of writing Latin verse. In spite of the incompleteness, on many sides, of his work Ritschl must be assigned a place in the history of learning among a very select few. His studies are presented principally in his Opuscula collected partly before and partly since his death. The Trinummus (twice edited) was the only specimen of his contemplated edition of Plautus which he completed. The edition has been continued by some of his pupilsGoetz, Loewe and others. - The facts of Ritschl's life may be best Iearned from the elaborate biography by Otto Ribbeck (Leipzig, 1879). An interesting anddiscriminating estimate of Ritschl's work is that by Lucian Mueller (Berlin, 1877). (J. S. R.) End of Article: RITSCHL, FRIEDRICH WILHELM (1806-1876) If you wish, you can link directly to this article.
<a href="http://jcsm.org/StudyCenter/Encyclopedia/RHY_RON/RITSCHL_FRIEDRICH_WILHELM_1806.html"> RITSCHL, FRIEDRICH WILHELM (1806-1876) </a> |
|
|
(Previous) RITSCHL, ALBRECHT (1822-1889) |
(Next) RITSON, JOSEPH (r7.52-1803) |
|
Sponsored Advertisements