Routledge Research Companion to Anglo-Italian Renaissance Literature and Culture

Michele Marrapodi is a Full Professor of English Literature at the University of Palermo, Italy. He is General Editor of the ‘Anglo-Italian Renaissance Studies’ series. His most recent edited volumes include Shakespeare’s Italy (1993), The Italian World of English Renaissance Drama (1998), Italian Studies in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries (1999), Shakespeare, Italy, and Intertextuality (2004), Italian Culture in the Drama of Shakespeare and His Contemporaries (2007), Shakespeare and Renaissance Literary Theories (2011), Shakespeare and the Italian Renaissance (2014), and Shakespeare and the Visual Arts: The Italian Influence (2017).

"This wide-ranging collection brings together the best current work in Anglo-Italian studies and forecasts future developments. Theoretically sophisticated and intellectually rigorous, the essays here treat major and minor figures, works, and genres, all the while illuminating hidden movements and cross-currents in literature, history, theology, and other disciplines. The volume, in toto, documents the reciprocal circulation of energies that powered both the Italian and English Renaissances. Prof. Marrapodi’s international team of distinguished contributors and bright new voices will inspire and guide scholarly conversations for a long time to come."--Robert S. Miola, Gerard Manley Hopkins Professor of English / Lecturer in Classics Loyola University Maryland"Reading this new collection, one is taken aback by how extensive and profound the cultural conversation between early modern Italy and England actually was. Preceded by a deeply researched introduction by Michele Marrapodi, the essays manage to anatomize this dauntingly complex field afresh and rethink familiar figures and configurations while adding a host of unfamiliar ones. What emerges is not just the one-way traffic of "influence" but dynamic and layered exchanges both within and between two separate cultures and cultural moments. It is equally good at recounting the Italian rediscovery of ancient figures, such as Seneca and Lucretius (long prior to their English impact), as it is at exploring original Italian cultural inventions such as courtliness, "civil conversation", and reason of state."-- John Gillies, Professor in Literature, University of Essex"In this ambitious and extraordinarily useful volume, ably assembled by Michele Marrapodi, distinguished senior and junior scholars from Italy, Great Britain, and North America revisit the crucial questions surrounding the influence of Italy, its literature and its culture on England in the age of Shakespeare. Among the volume's many virtues are its double focus on the original Italian texts and contexts and their appropriation, transformation, and re-visioning in English hands. Equally admirable is its revisitation of the multiple still-valid acquisitions of past scholarship, even while defining the current "state of the field" and its future possibilities. Finally, while the volume’s primary inspiration is literary and especially theatrical, it demonstrates a laudable commitment to probing the "mobilities," ambiguities, and political-ideological-religious investments that inform the complex processes of cultural transmission."--Albert Russell Ascoli, President, Dante Society of America, Terrill Distinguished Professor, Department of Italian Studies, University of California, Berkeley.

• AcknowledgementsIntroductionMichele Marrapodi Past, present, and future in Anglo-Italian renaissance studies:i. Back to the past. Forward to the presentii. Italy as a stageiii. Ideology and politics in Italianate revenge dramaiv. Critical approaches to Italian literature and culturev. Prospects of future developmentsvi. This volume: Part onevii. This volume: Part twoPART I: Italian literature and culture1. Dante’s Vita Nuova and Petrarchismo: A Critical Review of Contemporary ScholarshipMarco Andreacchio2. Boccaccio’s Decameron and TheatricalityJanet Levarie Smarr3. Commedia erudita: Birth and TransfigurationLouise George Clubb 4. Machiavelli’s comedies of "virtù"Duncan Salkeld5. Senecan Tragedy in the English RenaissanceMario Domenichelli 6. Masters of civility: Castiglione’s Courtier, Della Casa’s Galateo, and Guazzo’s CivilConversation in early modern EnglandCathy L. Shrank7. "Did Ariosto write it?" – The Orlando Furioso in Elizabethan poetry Selene Scarsi8. The Italian comici and commedia dell'arteRichard Andrews9. Giordano Bruno in England. From London to RomeGilberto Sacerdoti10. Italian Pastoral Tragicomedy and English Early Modern DramaRobert Henke11. The Pastoral Poem and NovelJane Tylus12. "Oh that we had such an English Tasso": Tasso in English Poetry and Drama to 1700Jason LawrencePART II: Appropriations and ideologies13. Petrarch in EnglandJohn Roe14. The Novella and the Art of Story-Telling in the Anglo-Italian RenaissanceMelissa Walter 15. Shakespeare and the Arts of Painting and MusicDuncan Salkeld 16. ‘Absolute Castilio’? The Reputation and Reception of Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier inElizabethan EnglandMary Partridge17. Machiavelli’s Principe and the New Ethics of PowerAlessandra Petrina18. ‘Boying their greatness’: Transnational Effects of the Italian Divas on the Shakespearean Stage Rosalind Kerr 19. Commedia dell’arte in Early Modern English DramaEric Nicholson20. The Scholarship of Italian and English Renaissance FestivalsJ. R. Mulryne21. John Florio and the Circulation of Italian CultureMichael Wyatt22. Heretics, Translators, Intelligencers: Italian Reformers in Tudor EnglandDiego Pirillo23. Italy, Printing industry, and the cultural market in Elizabethan EnglandMario Domenichelli24. Anglo-Venetian Networks. Paolo Sarpi in Early Modern EnglandChiara Petrolini and Diego PirilloAfterwordLoc