An English Italian and an Italianate Englishman in Ireland: Lodowick Bryskett and Sir John Harington

The Annual Distinguished Patrides Lecture 2025.

This lecture looks at the relationship between Ireland, England and Italy in the late sixteenth century through a study of two writers during their time in Ireland. It will explore the ways in which Renaissance English writers used their understanding of Italian culture to think about Ireland during the last decades of Elizabeth's reign as the English sought to crush Irish opposition, in the aftermath of the Desmond Rebellion (1579-83) and the Nine Years War (1594-1603). Using the examples of the Italian intellectual, tutor and colonist, Lodowick Bryskett (c.1546-1609/12) and the poet, soldier and godson of Queen Elizabeth I, Sir John Harington (1560-1612), the talk will show how both writers sought to align English military might and rights of conquest with Italian cultural and political sophistication. In doing so they were consciously attempting to fracture the religious alliance of the Catholic Irish and Italians, asserting that it was the English, not the Irish, who could make proper use of Italian literature and culture.

About the speaker: Andrew Hadfield is professor of English at the University of Sussex and a fellow of the British Academy. He is the author of a number of studies of early modern literature and culture, including, Edmund Spenser: A Life (2012); Lying in Early Modern English Culture from the Oath of Supremacy to the Oath of Allegiance (2017); Literature and Class from the Peasants’ Revolt to the French Revolution (2021); and, with Matthew Dimmock, Mapping the World at the Dawn of the British Empire: A Traveller's Guide (2025). He is a general editor of the works of Thomas Nashe and a regular reviewer for the Times Literary Supplement.

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