The small but influential community of Italians that took shape in England in the fifteenth century initially consisted of ecclesiastics, humanists, merchants, bankers and artists. However, in the wake of the English Reformation, Italian Protestants joined other continental religious refugees in finding Tudor England to be a hospitable and productive haven, and they brought with them a cultural perspective informed by the ascendency among European elites of their vernacular language. This study maintains that questions of language are at the centre of the circulation of ideas in the early modern period. Wyatt first examines the agency of this shifting community of immigrant Italians in the transmission of Italy's cultural patrimony and its impact on the nascent English nation; Part Two turns to the exemplary career of John Florio, the Italo-Englishman who worked as a language teacher, lexicographer and translator in Elizabethan and Jacobean England.
- ISBN13 9781107407596
- Publish Date 13 September 2012 (first published 1 January 2005)
- Publish Status Active
- Out of Print 6 June 2022
- Publish Country GB
- Imprint Cambridge University Press
- Format Paperback (US Trade)
- Pages 392
- Language English