Originally published on December 9, 2024 at 11:31 AM (Episode 387)
Introduction
In the sixteenth century wealthy men and women began to furnish new rooms called studioli—private libraries where they could read, correspond, and think. Machiavelli had one, a retreat from his rural exile, in which he wrote The Prince. Montaigne had one in a tower on his estate, in which he wrote his essays.
But the study was never only a retreat from the world for the purpose of creative thought; it was also a stage for politics, religion, and even madness, as stories from Don Quixote to Prospero to Faustus remind us. Andrew Hui explains.
About the Guest
Andrew Hui is Associate Professor of the Humanities at Yale-NUS College in Singapore. His most recent book is The Study: The Inner Life of Renaissance Libraries.
For Further Investigation
Andrew Hui, The Study: The Inner Life of Renaissance Libraries (Princeton, 2024)
Lina Bolzoni, The Gallery of Memory: Literary and Iconographic Models in the Age of the Printing Press (Toronto, 2019)
Dora Thornton, The Scholar in His Study: Ownership and Experience in Renaissance Italy (Yale, 1997)
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Listen & Discuss
Do you have your own “study”—or wish you did? Share this episode with a fellow bibliophile who dreams of a quiet room filled with books.
