Individual and collective memory in Neo-Latin occasional texts until 1700

Previous comprehensive works on Neo-Latin literature interpreted the texts prepared for illustrious occasions primarily as historical sources. My project plans to study this phenomenon: how did the occasional genres that served to capture individual life events become part of individual and collective memory? How did the texts become historical sources? To what extent do representations of the aristocracy and those of the gentry and the church differ from each other, and what shared points of reference can be identified?

The project focuses on exploring and interpreting funeral orations: on the one hand, they represent one of the most popular text types of the time; on the other hand, these works interpreted and recorded the individual biographies along patterns formed by social expectations.