Home of the Renaissance: Studies of Culture and Identity in Sixteenth-Century Florence

FAIN: FT-56422-08

Ann E. Moyer
University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, PA 19104-6205)

I wish to continue work on a book-length historical study of the formation and analysis of cultural identity in later Renaissance Florence at the time of Cosimo I (1537-69). Sources used are mainly the writings, both in manuscript and in early printed books, of the era's leading Florentine writers and scholars, many of whom are little known today. They developed the long-lasting image of Florence as home of the Renaissance. But they also debated the means and methods for studying and identifying cultural groups more generally. In their work we can see the beginnings of the social sciences, as a set of fields assumed to have developed some 200 years later. I argue that these efforts to define and examine cultural groups are a major contribution of Renaissance humanism. I have surveyed Florentine sources, researched two chapters, and written one. Funding will allow me to study manuscript and early printed sources in Florence in summer 2008 to complete another chapter and more.