The social world of the poligrafi and the cultural politics of sixteenth-century Italy

Thesis

This thesis is about the poligrafi, an amorphous group of writers, editors, and translators active in sixteenth-century Italy, and their impact on cultural politics – debates about the nature, purpose and audience for education, art, and literature. Drawing on archival sources and the poligrafi’s manuscript and print publications across four generations, it contributes to historiographical debates about the impact of the printing press and humanist culture on patronage networks and writers in sixteenth-century Italy. At the same time, it shows how the poligrafi’s attempts to improve their social standing prompted their provocative criticisms of humanist court culture, the nature of language, and the use of obscenity, as well as their shift towards propagandistic work for the Venetian republic in the second half of the sixteenth century.

The first part of this thesis is about the social world of the poligrafi, concentrating first on their social world outside Venice (chapter 1) followed by their social world in Venice (chapter 2). The second part, on cultural politics, is split into three chapters. These deal respectively with the role of poligrafi in the circulation of libel in manuscript and print outside of Venice (chapter 3), their reinvention in Venice, following the Sack of Rome of 1527, as truth-tellers opposed to courtiers and humanist culture (chapter 4), and the shift of those poligrafi who remained in Venice towards propagandistic treatises on art, guidebooks, and popular histories from the mid-1540s onwards (chapter 5). Finally, the conclusion discusses the wider significance of this inquiry in three main areas: first, for our understanding of early modern patronage systems in ecclesiastical and princely courts and republics; second, with respect to the nature and impact of technological innovation – specifically, of the printing press; and third, with respect to humanist debates about language, style, and form in sixteenth-century Italy.

Authors: Goodwin, T

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-pzdw9rpee
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: cultural history; history of the book; social history; early modern italy
• Subjects: History