The speech Philip Melanchthon gave on 29 August 1518 at the University of Wittenberg to initiate his professorship is an impressive piece of humanist idealism. Already its title, De corrigendis adolescentiae studiis (On the reform of the studies for the young) reveals his earnest ambitions in introducing reform. Not incidentally, thus, the speech received a lot of attention immediately after its delivery and enjoyed a remarkable popularity even decades after. The speech marks, however, not only an interesting object of study in terms of its content but also in terms of its generic form. Usually labelled as a declamation, this study will revaluate this generic attribution, for the first time, by arguing that the declamation as an academic genre was only introduced into the German academic landscape after Melanchthon's debut in Wittenberg and that De corrigendis adolescentiae studiis does not convincingly fit the standards of declamatory speech in many other respects. It will be shown that the category more apt for talking about Melanchthon's speech is that of the inaugural oration – a genre yet highly underappreciated in modern research on early modern academic oratory.

中文翻译：

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体裁问题：菲利普·梅兰希顿在维滕贝格大学的首次演讲

1518 年 8 月 29 日，菲利普·梅兰希顿 (Philip Melanchthon) 在维滕贝格大学发表了就任教授的演讲，这是令人印象深刻的人文理想主义作品。已经是它的标题了，《青少年研究修正》《论少年学业改革》透露了他推行改革的殷切抱负。并非偶然，这篇演讲一发表就受到了广泛关注，甚至在几十年后也受到了极高的欢迎。然而，这篇演讲不仅在内容上而且在其一般形式上都标志着一个有趣的研究对象。通常被标记为朗诵，本研究将首次重新评估这种通用属性，认为朗诵作为一种学术流派是在梅兰希顿在维滕贝格首次亮相后才被引入德国学术界的，并且《De Corrigendis Youthiae Studiis 》在许多其他方面并不令人信服地符合演讲的标准。我们将证明，更适合谈论梅兰希顿演讲的类别是就职演说——这是一种在现代早期学术演说研究中却被高度低估的流派。