Italian academies (1500-1700)

"One of the most important and influential social and intellectual phenomena of the early modern period, Italian academies have traditionally been studied individually or in the context of specific cities, and then mostly in the Italian language. While this approach has resulted in a wealth of information on single institutions and figures, the absence of a critical reading of the broader phenomenon remains an important lacuna in the scholarship on Italian culture and the early modern period in Europe. Cutting across various disciplines from history of the book to literary criticism to intellectual history, this far-reaching volume traces the network of early modern Italian Academies and explains how they served as the basis for later intellectual networks such as the European 'Republique des lettres'"--