During twenty years of reading and researching Renaissance texts, I have become fascinated by questions of reception and readership. This lecture traces the journey on which my research has taken me in that period, from writers to readers and from the very highest courtly poetry to the scraps of text worn on the bodies of illiterate workmen. I will aim to assess some of the wide variety of ways in which texts were used and consumed in the first decades of the age of print.

This event will be in English.

Professor Abigail Brundin took up her role as Director of the BSR in September 2021. She is Professor of Italian and a fellow of St Catharine’s College at the University of Cambridge, where she was previously Chair of the Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics. Her research interests include Italian literature and literary history from the beginning of the age of print, with particular concern for marginalised voices including those of women and religious minorities. She has also run projects in historic libraries in English country houses on books connected with the Grand Tour, in collaboration with the National Trust and English Heritage.