Present-day scholarship holds that the Italian academies were the model for the European literary and learned society. This volume questions the 'Italian paradigm' and discusses the literary and learned associations in Italy and Spain - explicitly called academies - as well as others in Germany, France, and the Netherlands. The flourishing of these organizations from the fifteenth century onwards coincided chronologically with the growth of performative literary culture, the technological innovation of the printing press, the establishment of early humanist networks, and the growing impact of...