Print Culture in Renaissance Italy

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.

• Valuable interdisciplinary contribution to the study of Renaissance culture • Broadly-based study of print culture from the viewpoint of its producers and its consumers

1. Printers, authors and the rise of the editor; 2. Editors and their methods; 3. Humanists, friars and others: editing in Venice and Florence, 1470–1500; 4. Bembo and his influence, 1501–1530; 5. Venetian editors and ‘the grammatical norm’, 1501–1530; 6. Standardisation and scholarship: editing in Florence, 1501–1530; 7. Towards a wider readership: editing in Venice, 1531–1545; 8. The editor triumphant: editing in Venice, 1546–1560; 9. In search of a cultural identity: editing in Florence, 1531–1560; 10. Piety and elegance: editing in Venice, 1561–1600; 11. ‘A true and living image’: editing in Florence, 1561–1600; Conclusion.