Printing, Writers and Readers in Renaissance Italy

Printing, Writers and Readers in Renaissance Italy
Author: Brian Richardson
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 256
Release: 1999-08-05
Genre: Design
ISBN: 9780521576932

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 Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe

The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe
Author: Elizabeth L. Eisenstein
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 412
Release: 2005-09-12
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780521845434

New illustrated and abridged edition surveys the communications revolution of the fifteenth century.

Printing and Reading Italian Latin Humanism in Renaissance Europe (ca. 1470-ca. 1540)

Printing and Reading Italian Latin Humanism in Renaissance Europe (ca. 1470-ca. 1540)
Author: Alejandro Coroleu
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 230
Release: 2014-06-02
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1443861057

With the advent of the printing press throughout Europe in the last quarter of the fifteenth century, the key Latin texts of Italian humanism began to be published outside Italy, most of them by a small group of printers who, in most cases, worked in close collaboration with lecturers and teachers. This study provides the first comprehensive account of the dissemination of this important literary corpus in Spain, France, the Low Countries and the German-speaking world between ca. 1470 and ca. 1540. By combining an examination of book production and consumption with attention to the educational system of Renaissance Europe, this book highlights both the historical significance of the Latin literature of Italian humanism within the school and university curriculum of the time, and the impact of such a body of texts on the rising national literary traditions, in Latin and in the vernacular, of the period. Printing and Reading Italian Latin Humanism in Renaissance Europe will appeal to scholars of classical and Renaissance literature, and to anyone interested in intellectual history and in the history of education in the Renaissance. It will be of particular interest to scholars in Hispanic studies.

Niccol˜ Di Lorenzo Della Magna and the Social World of Florentine Printing, Ca. 1470Ð1493

Niccol˜ Di Lorenzo Della Magna and the Social World of Florentine Printing, Ca. 1470Ð1493
Author: Lorenz Bšninger
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2021-04-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 067425113X

A new history of one of the foremost printers of the Renaissance explores how the Age of Print came to Italy. Lorenz Bšninger offers a fresh history of the birth of print in Italy through the story of one of its most important figures, Niccol˜ di Lorenzo della Magna. After having worked for several years for a judicial court in Florence, Niccol˜ established his business there and published a number of influential books. Among these were Marsilio FicinoÕs De christiana religione, Leon Battista AlbertiÕs De re aedificatoria, Cristoforo LandinoÕs commentaries on DanteÕs Commedia, and Francesco BerlinghieriÕs Septe giornate della geographia. Many of these books were printed in vernacular Italian. Despite his prominence, Niccol˜ has remained an enigma. A meticulous historical detective, Bšninger pieces together the thorough portrait that scholars have been missing. In doing so, he illuminates not only Niccol˜Õs life but also the Italian printing revolution generally. Combining Renaissance studiesÕ traditional attention to bibliographic and textual concerns with a broader social and economic history of printing in Renaissance Italy, Bšninger provides an unparalleled view of the business of printing in its earliest years. The story of Niccol˜ di Lorenzo furnishes a host of new insights into the legal issues that printers confronted, the working conditions in printshops, and the political forces that both encouraged and constrained the publication and dissemination of texts.

The Book in the Renaissance

The Book in the Renaissance
Author: Andrew Pettegree
Publisher:
Total Pages: 421
Release: 2010
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780300110098

The dawn of print was a major turning point in the early modern world. It rescued ancient learning from obscurity, transformed knowledge of the natural and physical world, and brought the thrill of book ownership to the masses. But, as Andrew Pettegree reveals in this work of great historical merit, the story of the post-Gutenberg world was rather more complicated than we have often come to believe. The Book in the Renaissance reconstructs the first 150 years of the world of print, exploring the complex web of religious, economic, and cultural concerns surrounding the printed word. From its very beginnings, the printed book had to straddle financial and religious imperatives, as well as the very different requirements and constraints of the many countries who embraced it, and, as Pettegree argues, the process was far from a runaway success. More than ideas, the success or failure of books depended upon patrons and markets, precarious strategies and the thwarting of piracy, and the ebb and flow of popular demand. Owing to his state-of-the-art and highly detailed research, Pettegree crafts an authoritative, lucid, and truly pioneering work of cultural history about a major development in the evolution of European society.

Print Culture in Renaissance Italy

Print Culture in Renaissance Italy
Author: Brian Richardson
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 288
Release: 1994
Genre: Design
ISBN: 9780521893022

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 Printing Press as an Agent of Change

The Printing Press as an Agent of Change
Author: Elizabeth L. Eisenstein
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 814
Release: 1980-09-30
Genre: Design
ISBN: 9780521299558

A full-scale historical treatment of the advent of printing and its importance as an agent of change, first published in 1980.

The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Humanism

The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Humanism
Author: Jill Kraye
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 350
Release: 1996-02-23
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780521436243

From the fourteenth to the seventeenth century, humanism played a key role in European culture. Beginning as a movement based on the recovery, interpretation and imitation of ancient Greek and Roman texts and the archaeological study of the physical remains of antiquity, humanism turned into a dynamic cultural programme, influencing almost every facet of Renaissance intellectual life. The fourteen essays in this 1996 volume deal with all aspects of the movement, from language learning to the development of science, from the effect of humanism on biblical study to its influence on art, from its Italian origins to its manifestations in the literature of More, Sidney and Shakespeare. A detailed biographical index, and a guide to further reading, are provided. Overall, The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Humanism provides a comprehensive introduction to a major movement in the culture of early modern Europe.

Copyright in the Renaissance

Copyright in the Renaissance
Author: Christopher L. C. E. Witcombe
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 447
Release: 2004-01-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004137483

This richly documented study of copyright in sixteenth-century Venice and Rome provides valuable new information about the "privilegio" and the printers, engravers, painters, mapmakers, and others who used it to protect their commercial interests in various types of printed images.

Printing a Mediterranean World

Printing a Mediterranean World
Author: Sean Roberts
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 385
Release: 2013-02-14
Genre: History
ISBN: 0674071611

In 1482, the Florentine humanist and statesman Francesco Berlinghieri produced the Geographia, a book of over one hundred folio leaves describing the world in Italian verse, inspired by the ancient Greek geography of Ptolemy. The poem, divided into seven books (one for each day of the week the author “travels” the known world), is interleaved with lavishly engraved maps to accompany readers on this journey. Sean Roberts demonstrates that the Geographia represents the moment of transition between printing and manuscript culture, while forming a critical base for the rise of modern cartography. Simultaneously, the use of the Geographia as a diplomatic gift from Florence to the Ottoman Empire tells another story. This exchange expands our understanding of Mediterranean politics, European perceptions of the Ottomans, and Ottoman interest in mapping and print. The envoy to the Sultan represented the aspirations of the Florentine state, which chose not to bestow some other highly valued good, such as the city’s renowned textiles, but instead the best example of what Florentine visual, material, and intellectual culture had to offer.