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Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-88847-9 - Manuscript Culture in Renaissance Italy Brian Richardson Frontmatter More information MANUSCRIPT CULTURE IN RENAISSANCE ITALY Even after the arrival of printing in the fifteenth century, texts continued to be circulated within Italian society by means of manu- script. Scribal culture offered rapidity, flexibility and a sense of pri- vate, privileged communication. This is the first detailed treatment of the continuing use of scribal transmission in Renaissance Italy. Brian Richardson explores the uses of scribal culture within spe- cific literary genres, its methods and its audiences. He also places it within the wider systems of textual communication and of self- presentation, examining the relationships between manuscript and print and between manuscript and the spoken or sung performance of verse. An important contribution to a lively area of the history of the book, this study will be of interest both for the abundance of new material on the circulation of texts in Italy and as a model for how to study the cultures of manuscript and print in early modern Europe. brian richardson is Professor of Italian Language at the University of Leeds. He is the author of Print Culture in Renaissance Italy: The Editor and the Vernacular Text, 1470–1600 (Cambridge, 1994) and Printing, Writers and Readers in Renaissance Italy (Cambridge, 1999). © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-88847-9 - Manuscript Culture in Renaissance Italy Brian Richardson Frontmatter More information MANUSCRIPT CULTURE IN RENAISSANCE ITALY BRIAN RICHARDSON © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-88847-9 - Manuscript Culture in Renaissance Italy Brian Richardson Frontmatter More information cambridge university press Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo, Delhi Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge cb2 8ru, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521888479 © Brian Richardson 2009 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2009 Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data Richardson, Brian (Brian F.) Manuscript culture in Renaissance Italy / Brian Richardson. p. cm. isbn 978-0-521-88847-9 (hardback) 1. Italian literature–15th century–Criticism, Textual. 2. Italian literature– 16th century–Criticism, Textual. 3. Transmission of texts–Italy–History–To 1500. 4. Transmission of texts–Italy–History–16th century. 5. Manuscripts, Renaissance–Italy. 6. Authors and readers–Italy–History–15th century. 7. Authors and readers–Italy–History–16th century. I. Title. pq4075.r53 2009 850.9Ł003–dc22 2009031402 isbn 978-0-521-88847-9 Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-88847-9 - Manuscript Culture in Renaissance Italy Brian Richardson Frontmatter More information Contents List of illustrations page vii Preface ix List of abbreviations xiii 1 The contexts and characteristics of manuscript circulation 1 1 The functions of manuscript circulation and the drawbacks of print 1 2 Authors and the scribal medium 14 3 Social transmission and author publication 20 4 Social transmission and user publication 34 5 Social transmission and networks 44 6 Public availability 53 2 Handwriting and the work of copyists 59 1 Varieties of script and the teaching of handwriting 59 2 ‘Professional’ scribes 68 3 Authors’ use of scribes 79 3 The manuscript circulation of lyric and burlesque poetry 95 1 Sending occasional verse: Caro and Tasso 95 2 Exchanges and responses 99 3 Current affairs 114 4 Burlesque and licentious verse 126 5 Collecting verse in manuscript 131 4 The manuscript circulation of prose 153 1 Current affairs, history and politics 153 2 Religious debates and prophecy 169 3 Literary disputes 191 v © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-88847-9 - Manuscript Culture in Renaissance Italy Brian Richardson Frontmatter More information vi Contents 5 Authors and their readers: dedications and other paratexts 198 1 Addresses to readers in manuscript 199 2 Addresses to readers from manuscript to print 216 6 Orality, manuscript and the circulation of verse 226 1 Performing and listening 227 2 The performance of manuscript verse 240 3 Orality and manuscript verse 254 Conclusion 259 Bibliography 269 General index 310 © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-88847-9 - Manuscript Culture in Renaissance Italy Brian Richardson Frontmatter More information Illustrations 1 Agnolo Bronzino, Portrait of Laura Battiferri, c. 1560. Florence, Palazzo Vecchio, Loeser Collection. © Photo Scala, Florence, 1990. 138 2 Giovan Battista Moroni, Portrait of Giovanni Bressani, 1562. Edinburgh, National Gallery of Scotland. 139 3 A sonnet by Francesco Maria Molza, c. 1535. Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, MS It. IX 144 (6866), fol. 12r. 140 4 The final page of a manuscript containing a vernacular translation of Cicero, De amicitia, with a collection of sententiae from classical and Christian sources. © British Library Board. All Rights Reserved. MS Add. 16553, fol. 52r. 141 5 The dedicatory letter, addressed by Niccolò Maria d’Este to Duke Ercole d’Este, of a copy of Gian Giacomo Bertolotti’s vernacular translation of the Tablet of Cebes. © British Library Board. All Rights Reserved. MS Add. 22331, fol. 2r. 142 6 Niccolò Machiavelli’s comedy Clizia, transcribed by Ludovico degli Arrighi. Colchester, Colchester and Ipswich Museum Service, MS 1932.225B, fols. 1v–2r. 143 7 The dedicatory letter of Niccolò Machiavelli’s Il principe. Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, MS It. II 77 (5038), fol. 2r. 144 8 Biagio Buonaccorsi’s letter of transmission, addressed to Pandolfo Bellacci, accompanying one of his manuscripts of Machiavelli’s Il principe. Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, MS XLIV 32, fol. 1r. 145 9 Torquato Tasso’s dialogue Il Nifo, overo del piacere, transcribed by Giulio Mosti. Ferrara, Biblioteca Comunale Ariostea, MS Cl. II 357, fol. 89r. 146 vii © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-88847-9 - Manuscript Culture in Renaissance Italy Brian Richardson Frontmatter More information viii List of illustrations 10 Francesco Marcaldi’s Narratione del stato della regina di Scotia. Reproduced by courtesy of the University Librarian and Director, The John Rylands University Library, The University of Manchester. MS Italian 6, fols. 7v–8r. 147 11 TheBeneficio di Cristo in the only surviving sixteenth-century manuscript copy. Florence, Biblioteca Riccardiana, MS 1785, fol. 18v. 148 12 The prophecy ‘Li obscuri versi che qui insieme ordisco’, with glosses. Paris, Bibliothèque Mazarine, MS 3898, fol. 101r. 149 13 The Latin version of Niccolò Valori’s life of Lorenzo de’ Medici. Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, MS LXI 3, fol. 3r. 150 14 Woodcut of an entertainer performing verse while playing the lira da braccio. From Luigi Pulci, Morgante maggiore (Florence: [Antonio Tubini], for Piero Pacini, 22 January 1500/1), fol. D2r. 151 15 A four-part setting by Marchetto Cara of a strambotto by Serafino Aquilano. © British Library Board. All Rights Reserved. MS Egerton 3051, fol. 19v. 152 © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-88847-9 - Manuscript Culture in Renaissance Italy Brian Richardson Frontmatter More information Preface This book is intended as a contribution to the history of the circulation of texts in Renaissance Italy. It is based on the premiss that this history is, or should be, an integral part of the study of literature itself, not merely a complement to it. If one is to understand fully the nature and the influ- ence of texts, it is necessary to know who their authors were addressing, how these authors expected their works to reach readers and the ways in which these works were in fact received, both during their first diffusion and in the longer term. The central topic of the book is manuscript culture: that is, the activ- ities and values associated with the circulation of handwritten texts. Manuscript culture in early modern England has been the subject of important new work since the 1990s, including the seminal writings of the late Harold Love, of Arthur Marotti and of Henry Woudhuysen. In early modern Italian studies, the situation is somewhat different. Scholars have produced excellent work on the traditions of specific texts in manuscript and on some professional scribes, and I have relied greatly on information drawn from their research. But relatively little attention has been paid to manuscript circulation as a distinctive part of a wider system of textual communication, used sometimes on its own, sometimes in conjunction with circulation through print and the spoken or sung word. There has been a pervasive tendency to assume that, after the introduction of the printing press to Italy in the 1460s, publishing became synonymous with printing: any text that remained in manuscript is all too easily described as unpublished or ‘inedito’, as if to have a text printed was the only way to make it available to the public. And the copying of Italian manuscripts in the sixteenth century – whether by authors, by scribes or by other users of texts – has been documented and studied less fully than that of the earlier period.