How were languages taught, negotiated, and mediated across cultures in Renaissance Europe? John Florio: Bilingualism, Style, and Cultural Mediation explores these questions through the work of one of early modern England's most accomplished bilingual intellectuals. Bringing together insights from Historical Stylistics, Historical Pragmatics, Dialogue Analysis, and Translation Studies, the volume examines Florio's language manuals, bilingual dictionaries, and translations as interconnected expressions of a broader practice of linguistic and cultural mediation, while providing the first sustained reassessment of his corpus since Frances A. Yates's landmark biography (1934). Language teaching, lexicography, self-translation, indirect translation, and Florio's connection with Shakespeare are examined in order to illuminate the circulation of languages, texts, and ideas between Italy and England in the Renaissance.

The study offers new perspectives on Renaissance bilingualism and cultural exchange, making it essential reading for scholars of early modern literature, translation history, language pedagogy, and Anglo-Italian relations.

Donatella Montini is Full Professor of English Language and Translation at Sapienza University of Rome, Italy, where she teaches history of English, stylistics and political linguistics. She is Editor in Chief of Memoria di Shakespeare. A Journal of Shakespearean Studies. She has published extensively on early modern English language teaching and translation. She has authored a volume on English contemporary stylistics (La stilistica inglese contemporanea. Teorie e metodi, Carocci 2020) and Guida a Re Lear (2024). She has co-edited a book on Queen Elizabeth I's language and style for Palgrave (Elizabeth I in Writing. Language, Power and Representation in Early Modern England, Palgrave 2018), and a book on the use of non-standard language in fictional texts (The Dialects of British English in Fictional Texts, Routledge 2021).