The spread of printing to Renaissance Italy had a dramatic impact on all users of books. As works came to be diffused more widely and cheaply, so authors had to adapt their writing and their methods of publishing to the demands and opportunities of the new medium, and reading became a more frequent and user-friendly activity. Printing, Writers and Readers in Renaissance Italy focuses on this interaction between the book industry and written culture. After describing the new technology and the contexts of publishing and bookselling, it examines the continuities and changes faced by writers in the shift from manuscript to print, the extent to which they benefited from print in their careers, and the greater accessibility of books to a broader spectrum of readers, including women and the less well educated. This is the first integrated study of a topic of central importance in Italian and European culture.

The emergence of print in late fifteenth-century Italy gave a crucial new importance to the editors of texts, who determined the form in which texts from the Middle Ages would be read, and who could strongly influence the interpretation and status of texts by adding introductory material or commentary. Brian Richardson here examines the Renaissance circulation and reception of works by earlier writers including Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio and Ariosto, as well as popular contemporary works of entertainment. In so doing he sheds light on the impact of the new printing and editing methods on Renaissance culture, including the standardisation of vernacular Italian and its spread to new readers and writers, the establishment of new standards in textual criticism, and the increasing rivalry between the two cities on which this study is chiefly focused, Venice and Florence.

The first comprehensive guide to women's promotion and use of textual culture, in manuscript and print, in Renaissance Italy.

Even after the arrival of printing in the fifteenth century, texts continued to be circulated within Italian society by means of manuscript. Scribal culture offered rapidity, flexibility and a sense of private, privileged communication. This book is a detailed treatment of the continuing use of scribal transmission in Renaissance Italy. Brian Richardson explores the uses of scribal culture within specific literary genres, its methods and its audiences. He also places it within the wider system of textual communication and of self-presentation, examining the relationships between manuscript and print and between manuscript and the spoken or sung performance of verse. An important contribution to a lively area of the history of the book, this study will be of interest both for the abundance of new material on the circulation of texts in Italy and as a model for how to study the cultures of manuscript and print in early modern Europe.

Discover what life was like for ordinary people in Renaissance Italy through this unique resource that paints a full portrait of everday living.

Publisher description

From comic verse to practical jokes, pornography to satire, acting to acrobatics, the Renaissance witnessed the flowering of play in all its forms. In the first wide-ranging and accessible introduction to play in Renaissance Italy, Peter Burke, celebrated historian of the Italian Renaissance, synthesizes over forty years’ research, explores the various forms of play in this period, and offers an overview that reveals the many connections between its different domains. While play could be rough, the Church played an increasing role in determining acceptable and unacceptable forms of play, and, after campaigns against violence and obscenity, much of the licentiousness characteristic of the early Renaissance was tamed. This entertaining study of play reveals much about the culture of Renaissance Italy, and illuminates an essential element in human life.