Associate Professor, Departments of Italian and Classics

Director of the Centre for the Study of the Renaissance

BA (Brussels), MSt (Oxford), PhD (Brussels)

Personal Profile:

Maude Vanhaelen studied Classics at the University of Brussels (1995-1999). She later completed a Master of Studies in Classics at the University of Oxford and then took a Ph.D. at the University of Brussels (2001-2005). Before joining Warwick she spent two years of research, first as a Post-doctoral Fellow in Classics at the University of Oxford (2005-2006), then as a Deborah Loeb Brice Fellow at Villa I Tatti, the Harvard Center for Renaissance Studies in Florence (2006-2007).

Teaching:

• Receptions of Antiquity: East and West
• Greek Literary Texts

Research:

Dr Vanhaelen's research focuses on the reception of philosophy in the Italian Renaissance in the 15th and 16th centuries. She has published a number of articles on the work of the Florentine humanist Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499), who offered the first translation in Latin of the complete works of Plato, and commented important works by Plato's successors. She has completed the critical edition and translation of Ficino’s Commentary on Plato’s Parmenides in the I Tatti Renaissance Library series (ITRL), which is due to be published shortly. She is currently undertaking a project that explores the reception of Ficino's work in the sixteenth century, both in Latin and in the vernacular, with a focus on the political reappropriation of Platonism in sixteenth-century Italy and the importance of demonology in the history of science.

Dr Vanhaelen's approach consists in studying the historical and ideological context in which ancient texts were translated and interpreted, with a view to determine what differentiates Renaissance receptions from Ancient and Medieval reappropriations of Antiquity (for instance, Proclus, St Augustine and Thomas Aquinas). In addition to editing and translating hitherto unexplored texts in manuscripts and early printed books, she examines the context in which these texts were produced and received—the exchange of letters between humanists, the constitution of private libraries and the theological debates of the time, both within and outside the universities, among members of the clergy and laity alike. She also explores the impact of sources that lie outside the doctrinal canon traditionally ascribed to Renaissance philosophy, such as Jewish and Arabic mysticism, Hermetic, astrological and magical texts.

Recent Publications

• Marsilio Ficino, Commentary on Plato’s Parmenides. A Critical Edition with English Translation and Notes, 2 vols (The I Tatti Renaissance Library, Harvard University Press), 2012
• 'Cose di Platone fatte Toscane'. Language and ideology in two vernacular translations of Plato printed by Francesco Priscianese', Modern Language Review, October 2012. (See PDF here)
• ‘L’entreprise de traduction et d’exégèse de Ficin dans les années 1486-89 : Démons et prophétie à l’aube de l’ère savonarolienne’, Humanistica 4/1 (2010), pp. 125-136. (see PDF here)
• 'Greek Philosophy in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (600-1600)' in M. Gagarin (ed.), The Oxford Encyclopedia for Ancient Greece and Rome, Oxford, 2009, 2,500 words.
• ‘The Pico-Ficino Controversy: New Evidence in Ficino’s Commentary on the Parmenides’, Rinascimento XLIX (2009), pp. 1-39. (see PDF here)
• “L’Être et l’Un à la Renaissance: La réfutation du De Ente et Uno de Pic dans l’In Parmenidem de Ficin”, in S. M. Broze, B. Decharneux, S. Delcominette (éds.), ΄Ἀλλ’εὖ μοι κατἀλεξον...Mais raconte-moi en détail...". Mélanges de philosophie et de philologie offerts à Lambros Couloubaristis, Vrin-Ousia, Paris-Athènes, 2008, pp. 623-635.
• ‘Liberté, astrologie et fatalité: Marsile Ficin et le De Fato de Plotin’, Accademia. Revue de la société Marsile Ficin, VII (2007), pp. 45-60. (see PDF here)
• Traduction annotée de l’In Charmidem vel de temperantia argumentum de Marsile Ficin’, Accademia. Revue de la société Marsile Ficin IV (2002), pp. 19-28.
• ‘Marsilio Ficino’s version of Plato’s Euthyphro’, Scriptorium 56-1 (2002), pp. 20-47.
• ‘Marsile Ficin, lecteur et interprète du Charmide de Platon’, Accademia. Revue de la Société Marsile Ficin III (2001), pp. 23-52. (see PDF here)

Forthcoming publications