Thanks to generous funding from the HRC and Warwick’s Centre for the Study of the Renaissance, I was able to undertake a three-week long research trip to the Newberry Library in Chicago this spring. The main purpose of this research was to consult their collections of sixteenth-century Italian plays in order to contribute to my current research project which examines the theme of the beffa in sixteenth-century Venice and Bologna. The beffa was a cruel type of joke that was used as a literary motif in many of the comedies and was intended to viciously mock certain comic characters.

In particular, they hold a rare Venetian one-act comedy by an unknown author entitled Comedia piacevolissima da ridere de un Bravo chiamato Rouinazo (Special Collections: Vault Case Y 712 .C735) that was brought to my attention during my research at the John Rylands Library in Manchester, which holds a photocopy of this play in their Walter Bullock collection. To the best of my knowledge, this short comedy has never been written about previously. It has only been referenced in a nineteenth-century French catalogue, where the author admits that this was the only comedy he did not see. It is written in Venetian dialect, and I argue that it is a rare, cheaply printed survival of comedies written in the villanesca genre that was specific to sixteenth-century Venice. I am grateful to have had the opportunity to see this item in person, as I am currently engaged in the process of writing a journal article about this play and I will be including a transcription as an appendix in my thesis. Therefore, it was essential for me to consult the original to gain a sense of its materiality and size. Additionally, I was also able to consult the other items that this comedy was originally bound with, which enabled me to gain a deeper understanding of its significance to the original collector and the works considered to be related to this comedy.

As I was fortunate to spend three weeks in Chicago, I was able to discover other comic works that I had never seen before, some also written in Venetian dialect. These included an intriguing comedy in five acts, of which the title and author are both unknown (Special Collections: Bonaparte 4745). This play includes numerous themes that are discussed in my PhD thesis and will be of particular use in my chapter on the mockery of the elderly. As a fellow, I was also assigned my own desk space, which permitted me to order books for my personal library. This allowed me to read secondary literature that I could not access in the UK and to make use of the hours, such as early morning and evening, when the manuscript reading room was closed.

During my time at the Newberry, I was also afforded the opportunity to engage in discourse with a number of esteemed scholars, such as Suzanne Karr Schmidt, the Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts, and Paul F. Gehl, a retired historian of manuscript and printed textbooks of the Renaissance. The Newberry also hosted a series of events designed to facilitate networking with other fellows, including research seminars and lunchtime work-in-progress meetings. A particular highlight was a workshop hosted by Suzanne, which showcased various manuscripts and rare books held at the Newberry.

Furthermore, the fellowship was scheduled for March 2024 so that I could make the best use of my time in Chicago and participate in the annual Renaissance Society of America conference, a highly regarded three-day internation conference that brings together thousands of scholars specialising in the Renaissanc period. As part of this, I collaborated with another student of the CSR, Eva van Kemenade, to organize a two-panel series titled Emotions, Senses, and Space: Experiencing Performances in the Renaissance City, where I also presented my own research. It was an invaluable experience to organise a panel series at such an esteemed conference. The panels were very well attended, and we organised a lunch with our panel presenters and chairs to discuss these aspects further. This proved to be a highly intellectually stimulating experience, allowing us to make important connections in our field. I was also able to establish new connections with many Renaissance scholars at the conference and strengthen previous relations built at other conferences, which will be important for my future academic prospects. Additionally, the RSA conference held a GIS training workshop, during which I was introduced to the making of digital maps for historical purposes. This is a technique I am interested in using in future research projects.

In summary, the three-week period spent in Chicago proved to be highly productive and valuable, allowing me to conduct research that is crucial for my current PhD project as well as a future publication. The relationships I established at the Newberry and the RSA conference will also prove to be beneficial for any future projects and my overall academic prospects.