Who the Devil Taught Thee So Much Italian?: Italian Language Learning and Literary Imitation in Early Modern England

This book offers a comprehensive account of the methods and practice of learning modern languages, particularly Italian, in late sixteenth and early seventeenth century England. It is the first study to suggest that there is a fundamental connection between these language-learning habits and the techniques for both reading and imitating Italian materials employed by a range of poets and dramatists, such as Daniel, Drummond, Marston and Shakespeare, in the same period. The widespread use of bilingual parallel-text instruction manuals from the 1570's onwards, most notably those of the Italian.