MCW Event Details...

Dr David Rundle

David Rundle joined the University of Kent in 2018 as Lecturer in Latin and Manuscript Studies in the Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies. He is a Renaissance historian and a palaeographer. He is currently working on a catalogue of the manuscripts of Magdalen College, Oxford with Ralph Hanna. His monograph, The Renaissance Reform of the Book and Britain, was published with Cambridge University Press in 2019, as part of their Studies in Palaeography series.

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About the event

Europe in the fifteenth century is often depicted as the best of times and the worst of times: in Italy, it was the springtime of the Renaissance; in England, it was the dreary autumn of the Middle Ages. It is a contrast that creates a centre of cultural vitality — Italy — and conjures an impression of England being both distant and inferior. What is less often commented is that this perception was constructed by Italian Renaissance scholars themselves, who made the British synonymous with the barbarous. This lecture will consider how and why this construction was forged and then go on to suggest why it is time to step out of its shadow and recognize fifteenth-century England’s complicity in the success of the Renaissance.