Academic & Teaching staff

Professor Brian Richardson

Professor of Italian Language

Professor Brian Richardson

+44 (0) 113 343 3632

Biography

I graduated from Oxford with a BA in Italian in 1968, then went to Bedford College, University of London, to complete an MPhil thesis on Machiavelli. I was a lecturer in Italian at the universities of Strathclyde (1970-72) and Aberdeen (1972-76) before moving to Leeds in 1977. I have taught across most areas of Italian studies, from the Placito capuano to Berlusconi's media interests, with a particular focus on the Renaissance, book history and on the questione della lingua in all periods. I was elected as a Fellow of the British Academy in 2003.

Studying the Renaissance and the development of the Italian language in the period led to an interest in printing, which was among other things a vehicle for the standardization of Italian, and in the history of the circulation of texts in general. I held a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship from 2005 to 2008, working on the circulation of literature in Renaissance society with particular reference to manuscript and the spoken or sung word. In 2009 I was co-investigator in a Workshops project, supported by the AHRC, on Scribal Culture in Italy, 1450-1650. In 2011-15 I am principal investigator of a project, funded by the European Research Council, entitled Oral Culture, Manuscript and Print in Early Modern Italy, 1450-1700.

Selected recent publications

Monographs and editions

Articles and essays

  • 'From Scribal Publication to Print Publication: Pietro Bembo's Rime, 1529-1535', Modern Language Review, 95 (2000), 684-95
  • 'The Italian of Renaissance Elites in Italy and Europe', in Anna Laura Lepschy and Arturo Tosi (eds), Multilingualism in Italy Past and Present (London: Legenda, 2002), pp. 5-23 
  • 'Inscribed Meanings: Authorial Self-Fashioning and Readers' Annotations in Sixteenth-Century Italian Printed Books', in Ian F. Moulton (ed.), Reading and Literacy in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Arizona Studies in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, 8 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004), pp. 85-104
  • '"Recitato e cantato": The Oral Diffusion of Lyric Poetry in Sixteenth-Century Italy', in Brian Richardson, Simon Gilson, and Catherine Keen (eds), Theatre, Opera, and Performance in Italy from the Fifteenth Century to the Present: Essays in Honour of Richard Andrews (Leeds: Society for Italian Studies, 2004), pp. 67-82
  • 'Latin and Italian in Contact in some Renaissance Grammars', in Anna Laura Lepschy and Arturo Tosi (eds), Rethinking Languages in Contact: The Case of Italian (London: Legenda, 2006), pp. 28-41
  • 'La stampa', in Gino Belloni and Riccardo Drusi (eds), Il Rinascimento italiano e l'Europa, vol. II (Treviso: Fondazione Cassamarca, 2007), pp. 139-55
  • 'The Diffusion of Literature in Renaissance Italy: The Case of Pietro Bembo', in Simon Eliot, Andrew Nash and Ian Willison (eds), Literary Cultures and the Material Book (London: British Library, 2007), pp. 175-89
  • 'The Concept of a lingua comune in Renaissance Italy', in Anna Laura Lepschy and Arturo Tosi (eds), The Languages of Italy: Histories and Dictionaries (Ravenna: Longo, 2007), pp. 13-30
  • 'Dalla metà del Quattrocento alla metà del Cinquecento', in Bice Mortara Garavelli (ed.), Storia della punteggiatura in Europa (Bari and Rome: Laterza, 2008), pp. 99-121
  • 'A Scribal Publisher of Political Information: Francesco Marcaldi', Italian Studies, 64 (2009), 296-313
  • 'Autografia e pubblicazione manoscritta nel Rinascimento', in Guido Baldassarri and others (eds), 'Di mano propria': gli autografi dei letterati italiani. Atti del Convegno internazionale di Forlì, 24-27 novembre 2008 (Rome: Salerno Editrice, 2010), pp. 269-85
  • '"Varie maniere di parlare": Aspects of Learning Italian in Renaissance Italy and Britain ', in Vilma De Gasperin (ed.), 'Ciò che potea la lingua nostra': Lectures and Essays in Memory of Clara Florio Cooper, The Italianist, 30 (2010), Special Supplement, 78-94

Editorial Work

I am general editor of the Modern Language Review and a co-editor of The Italianist.