Printing and Reading Italian Latin Humanism in Renaissance Europe

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.

Alejandro Coroleu is ICREA Research Professor at the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona. He has published extensively on neo-Latin literature and Humanism in Spain. Together with Barry Taylor, he edited the volume Humanism and Christian Letters in Early Modern Iberia (CSP, 2010). He is also the author of a Catalan translation of Lorenzo Valla's De falso credita et ementita Constantini donation, published in 2012.