Introductory description

The module aims to teach students about the development of print technology in Renaissance and Early Modern Italy and how print intertwined with manuscript, visual and oral media to create the dynamic communications culture of the period. It prompts students to consider if and how this new communications technology precipitated cultural, social, religious and political change in this era, and how authorities such as governments and the church sought to control or promote this change. Subject areas within the module include the development of the book trade, the impact of print on humanistic culture, science and medicine, the production of popular literature, maps and news, the role of print in spreading religious ideas in this period and the development of censorship mechanisms. Comparative elements in the course (particularly looking at France, Germany and England) encourage students to think about the wider European history of communication and its part in the history of early modernity.

Module web page

Module aims

Outline syllabus

This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.

• A Communications Revolution?
• Production and Distribution
• Printing, Humanism and Renaissance Culture
• Publish or Perish?
• Science and Secrets
• Seeing the World in Print
• News, Information and Politics
• Religion and Reformation
• Order and Control

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• Demonstrate a systematic knowledge and understanding of print culture in early modern Italy.
• Critically analyse and evaluate a broad range of primary sources relating to print culture in early modern Italy.
• Effectively communicate ideas, and make informed, coherent and persuasive arguments, about print culture in early modern Italy.
• Critically review and consolidate theoretical, methodological, and historiographical ideas relating to the relationship between intellectual, social and cultural history.

Indicative reading list

• Brian Richardson, Printing, Writers and Readers in Renaissance Italy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
• Andrew Pettegree, The Book in the Renaissance. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2010.

Primary Sources

• Relevant archival documents including those reproduced in H. Brown, The Venetian Printing Press (1891); D. Chambers and B. Pullan (eds), Venice: A Documentary History 1450 - 1630 (1992); M. Conway, The Diario of the Printing Press of San Jacopo di Ripoli, 1476 - 1484: Commentary and Transcription (1999).
• Selections from contemporary authors including Erasmus of Rotterdam, Pietro Aretino, Veronica Franco, Baldassare Castiglione, Anton Francesco Doni, Niccolò Franco, Tommaso Garzoni, Thomas Coryate.
• Facsimiles of contemporary printed editions available online via the Early European Books database; EDIT16 (Italian sixteenth-century editions database); Early English Books Online; the CERL Heritage of the Printed Book database and in printed editions including Guerre in ottava rima, 4 vols (1989); The Clothing of the Renaissance World: Cesare Vecellio’s Habiti antichi et moderni, eds M. Rosenthal and A. R. Jones (2008).
• Contemporary printed maps and images reproduced online and in works including D. Landau and P. Parshall, The Renaissance Print, 1470–1550 (1994); D. Woodward, Maps as Prints in the Italian Renaissance: Makers, Distributors and Consumers (1996); B. Talvacchia, Taking Positions. On the Erotic in Renaissance Culture (1999).

Key Secondary Sources

• R. M. Bell, How to Do It: Guides to Good Living for Renaissance Italians (1999)
• A. Blair, Too Much to Know: Managing Scholarly Information Before the Modern Age (2010)
• P. Burke, A Social History of Knowledge (2000)
• R. Chartier, The Order of Books (1994)
• F. De Vivo, Information and Communication in Venice: Rethinking Early Modern Politics (2007)
• W. Eamon, Science and the Secrets of Nature. Books of Secrets in Medieval and Early Modern Culture (1994)
• E. L. Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change: Communications and Cultural Transformations in Early Modern Europe (1979)
• P. F. Grendler, The Roman Inquisition and the Venetian Press, 1540-1605 (1977)
• R. Henke, Performance and Literature in the Commedia dell’Arte (2002)
• A. Johns, The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making (1998)
• A. Johns, Piracy: The Intellectual Property Wars from Gutenberg to Gates (2010)
• M. Lowry, The World of Aldus Manutius: Business and Scholarship in Renaissance Venice (1979)
• M. Lowry, Nicholas Jenson and the Rise of Venetian Publishing in Renaissance Europe (1991)
• A. Nuovo, The book trade in the Italian Renaissance, tran. Lydia G. Cochrane (Leiden, 2010).
• A. Pettegree, The Book in the Renaissance (2010)
• L. Pon, Raphael, Durer and Marcantonio Raimondi: Copying and the Renaissance Print (2004)
• B. Richardson, Printing, Writers and Readers in Renaissance Italy (1999)
• B. Richardson, Manuscript Culture in Renaissance Italy (2009)
• D. Robin, Publishing Women. Salons, the Presses, and the Counter-Reformation in Sixteenth-Century Italy (2007)
• R. Scriber, For the Sake of the Simple Folk: Popular Propaganda for the German Reformation (1981)
• B. Wilson, The World in Venice: Print, the City and Early Modern Identity (2005)
• C. L. E. Witcombe, Copyright in the Renaissance: Prints and the Privilegio in Sixteenth-Century Venice and Rome (2004)
• P. Yachnin and B. Wilson (eds), Making Publics in Early Modern Europe: People, Things, Forms of Knowledge (2009)

Web Resources

• A useful guide to bibliographical resources for Italian print, from the British Library website
• The Universal Short Title Catalogue - a collective database of all books published in European countries from the beginning of printing to the end of the sixteenth century.
• The Incunabula Short Title Catalogue - books printed before 1500.
• EDIT 16 = National Survey of Italian Editions of the Sixteenth Century.
• The Heritage of the Printed Book Database (European printing c. 1455-1830) - by the Consortium of European Research Libraries (CERL).
• EEBO - Early English Books Online.
• Gallica - many digitised manuscripts, maps and early printed editions from the Bibliotheque Nationale de France.
• Early European Books Online - digitisations of many pre-1701 European books.
• British Library - collection of digitised Renaissance Festival Books.
• e-rara - digitisations of early modern printed books and maps in Swiss libraries.
• BSB Munich - Digital collection of broadsides etc. from the Bavarian State Library.
• Digital editions of the works of Giulio Cesare Croce, the famous ballad singer of Bologna.
• Early Italian Printed Books at Warwick - search editions in the special collections.
• Popular printed imagery from the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin.
• British Museum print collection.
• Victoria and Albert Museum collections, including prints.

Subject specific skills

See learning outcomes.

Transferable skills

See learning outcomes.