Print Culture in Renaissance Italy: The Editor and the Vernacular Text, 1470-1600

Description

The emergence of print in late fifteenth-century Italy gave a crucial new importance to the editors of texts, who could strongly influence the interpretation and status of texts by determining the form and context in which they would be read. Brian Richardson examines the Renaissance production, circulation and reception of texts 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.

"Richardson's book is interesting and timely on a subject practically unknown and only partially understood." Annali d'italianistica "The editing and printing of the Latin and Greek classics has long been recognized as one of the glories of the Italian Renaissance, and scholars have duly studied the phenomenon...the book is original and welcome...Overall, Richardson has written an informative and very well-researched book that adds a good deal to our knowledge of printing and publishing in the Italian Renaissance." Paul Grendler, American Historical Review "This most carefully researched book, the first study in English of the role of the editor of Italian vernacular texts in the sixteenth century, wiill prove highly valuable to historians of early printing, of the book as a material object, and of the Italian language and its first canonical authors as well as to bibliographers and bibliophiles interested in the various editions of Petrarch, Boccaccio, Dante, and Ariosto that were published in the first century of printing." Modern Philology "This exceedingly rich book documents the growing importance of the editor or correctore of vernacular texts in (late) fifteenth and sixteenth-century Venice and Florence...This book is essential reading for Renaissance Scholars...it documents an exciting time in the history of western culture and provides an excellent reminder that all printed texts are the product of delicate negotiations between the integrity of the text and the needs of the reader." John Mulryan, Cithara