Abstract: The introduction presents this volume’s key aims: to explore what non-fiction literature from the early modern period has to say about domestic objects, their values, and their uses, straddling the threshold between the public and the private; and to spotlight the domus of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as a kind of “smart home” ahead of its time. It then justifies the relevance of the chosen methodology (a combination of literary studies and material studies), before concluding by presenting the different sections within the volume.
