Thomas Goodwin

Research Topic

The Social World of the Poligrafi and the Cultural Politics of Sixteenth-Century Italy

Supervisors: Prof David Parrott and Dr Miles Pattenden

I am a DPhil candidate in History at New College. My doctoral thesis, submitted in July 2020, is a social history of the poligrafi – an amorphous group of professional writers, editors and translators active in sixteenth-century Italy. It explores the impact of printing technology and Renaissance humanism on the social status of writers, artists and intellectuals, as well as the role of the poligrafi in the cultural politics of sixteenth-century Italy – that is, debates about the nature, purpose and audience for education, art, and literature.

My next research project will be a comparative history of political myth in Renaissance Venice and Genoa. By exploring political myth-making across four main areas: (1) ideologies; (2) actors (patrons, writers, artists, and audiences); (3) texts (manuscript and printed books, images); and (4) institutions (branches of government, businesses, lay confraternities, families and factions), this project will demonstrate the importance of studying the political narratives of particular social groups and individuals, and of widening the political sphere beyond formal governmental institutions and actors. In doing so, I hope to expose not simply the gap between myth and reality, but the ways in which myths shape reality, and vice-versa.

In 2018, I co-organised the conference 'Beyond Truth: Fiction and (Dis)information in the Early Modern World' at New College, Oxford. For more information about the conference, please visit oxdisinfo.wordpress.com.

You can read more about my research and publications on my Academia.edu profile.