Edited by Eva Del Soldato (University of Pennsylvania) and Andrea Rizzi (University of Melbourne).
This project is the end result of a series of cross-disciplinary discussions and meetings that helped the editors shape the present volume. Among these we can list the sessions held at the Renaissance Society of America (March 2012); a two-day conference in Florence and Prato (Monash University, November 2013) on language interaction in early modern Europe; and the 2015 symposium at Palazzo Rucellai on violent language in early modern Italy, an event made possible thanks to the support of ISI Florence.
This collection of studies focuses on early modern Italy and some of its key multilingual zones: Venice, Florence, and Rome. It offers a novel insight into the interplay and dynamic exchange of languages in the Italian peninsula, from the early fifteenth to the early seventeenth centuries. In particular, the essays collected in this volume examine the flexible linguistic practices of both the social and intellectual elite, as well as the men and women from the street.