Thomas Goodwin
DPhil Student
New College
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 study the social, cultural, intellectual, and literary history of Renaissance and early modern Europe, with a particular focus on Italy.
My doctoral thesis, examined in December 2020, was a social history of the poligrafi – an amorphous group of professional writers, editors and translators active in sixteenth-century Italy. It explored 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.
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.
