Over the past three decades, scholars have emphasized the centrality of Aristotle’s writings to Western thought and culture during the Renaissance. Yet, despite significant advances in the study of Latin Aristotelianism, vernacular Aristotelianism has been largely neglected. There is not even a catalogue of the relevant works, which would provide the starting-point for historians of language, literature, philosophy, science and culture to explore how Aristotelianism increasingly reached a broad and non-Latinate public. By investigating vernacular Aristotelianism in Renaissance Italy, this project will expand the boundaries of research in terms of the disciplines, languages, social groups and institutions considered. It will provide the first census of Aristotelian works in the Italian vernacular, laying the foundation for a detailed comparison between the Latin and the Italian traditions and a sustained, contextualized analysis of the significance of a range of works in different genres.

The electronic census (which will be searchable and publicly available) will include all relevant manuscript and printed materials in Italian. It will be followed by studies of selected fifteenth- and sixteenth-century commentaries on Aristotle, comparing them as appropriate with the Latin tradition.

The project will run from October 2010 to September 2013.