41 research outputs found
Anonymity in Eighteenth-Century Italian Publishing : The Absent Author
No full textThis book focuses on the use of anonymity in eighteenth-century Italian publishing, a centuries-old practice that has existed everywhere in Europe, but one to which scholars have rarely attached much importance.
Various are the reasons why authors choose to publish their works anonymously, including: prudence, fear of censorship, modesty, fear of personal criticism; or simple divertissement, and in many cases an ethical choice, especially for religious figures.
Anonymity was not linked exclusively to a logic of control – it did not, in other words, only concern the genres that ecclesiastical censorship had condemned as immoral or irreligious. It also concerned genres with a wide circulation, above all because writing books with a low cultural profile could harm the good name of the author: it was preferable, therefore, to take refuge in anonymity. The Italian case represent a crucial perspective for the study of the anonymity in a European context and contributes to the analysis of a topic to date rarely enquired
Carlo Goldoni and the Construction of Authorship on the Printed Page
No full textThe transformation of a play composed for the stage into a text printed to be read
is a complex operation often mentioned by the playwrights themselves in the prefaces
to the editions of their works. The printed publication could become the ‘place’
for perfecting what was performed on stage but it could also, for some authors, become
a ‘place’ in which they defended their authorship through the control of the
editions, even going so far, in the case of Carlo Goldoni (Venice 1707-Paris 1793), as to
break the rules of the book trade. The author attempts to show how the construction
of Goldoni’s authorship can be analyzed on three different levels: the expression of
the author’s will; his claim for the right to publish his works himself and finally the
representation of the figure of the author with the use of a different portrait for
each edition
Archivi culturali tra memoria d'autore e memoria d'editore
No full textThe article focuses on the role of institutions, in Italy and in other European countries, which preserve editorial archives (Deutsches Literaturarchiv di Marbach, imec, Centro per gli studi sulla tradizione manoscritta di autori moderni e contemporanei - University of Pavia, Fondazione Arnoldo e Alberto Mondadori, Centro Apice - University of Milan). The existence of these centres is particulary relevant nowadays when we risk to lose a recent past, perhaps the last heritage of a “culture of paper”. Recent studies have focused on the different typologies of cultural archives and on the the difficulty to let speak those documents that have often been selected by the author or publisher, with a partial and oriented construction, as all self-representations
Migrating Through the Web
Full text linkHow to study a media object on the web that is at the same time a documentary, a reportage, and a game which combines both fiction and non-fiction elements? Nicole Braida digs into the discursive and material structures and infrastructures of serious games, text-adventures, newsgames, interactive maps, and data visualizations, in which refugees and migrants become the subject of humanitarian discourse. Although the goal is to arouse empathy towards migrants, these »interactive practices« distinguish who is vulnerable and who is not. It supports the idea of a »migratory crisis«, which, the author argues, is actually the symptom of a deeper crisis of the humanitarian system itself
La letteratura nelle mani dei censori. Gigliola Fragnito e il Rinascimento perduto
Full text linkL’autrice discute il recente libro di Gigliola Fragnito, Rinascimento perduto. La letteratura
italiana sotto gli occhi dei censori (secoli XV-XVII), (Bologna, Il Mulino,
2019), dedicato al controllo sui testi letterari esercitato dalla censura ecclesiastica (attraverso
l’Inquisizione centrale e periferica, il Maestro del Sacro Palazzo e la Congregazione
dell’Indice) a partire dagli anni settanta del cinquecento. Fragnito sottolinea
come «l’accerchiamento della letteratura» riveli un’attenzione ossessiva a individuare
nei libri di svago segni di anticlericalismo, oscenità, o pericolose contaminazioni tra
sacro e profano. L’articolo si sofferma sulle conseguenze che tale azione repressiva
ebbe sulla cultura italiana nel lungo periodo, sottolineando i condizionamenti sulla
produzione e sulla circolazione del libro fino a tutto il settecento, come si può riscontrare
dall’uso della falsa data per la pubblicazione di alcuni autori latini, tra cui Ovidio
e Catullo, considerati osceni, o la difficoltà ad emergere di alcuni generi letterari, tra
cui il romanzo.Literature in the Censors’ Hands. Gigliola Fragnito and the Lost Renaissance
The author aims to discuss the recent book by Gigliola Fragnito, Rinascimento perduto.
La letteratura italiana sotto gli occhi dei censori (secoli XV-XVII), (Bologna, il Mulino
2019), dedicated to the control over literary texts by the ecclesiastical censorship
(through the Central and Peripheral Inquisition, the Maestro del Sacro Palazzo and the
Congregation of the Index) since the 1570s. Fragnito emphasises how this persecution
of literature revealed an obsessive attention to identifying signs of anticlericalism, obscenity,
or dangerous contaminations between the sacred and the profane in leisure.books. The article dwells on the consequences that this repressive action had on Italian
culture in the long run, underlining its conditioning effects on the production and circulation
of the book up to the end of the 18th century, as shown by the use of the false
places of publication of some Latin authors, including Ovid and Catullus, considered
obscene, or the difficult growth of some literary genres, including the novel
Dictionnaires des anonymes et pseudonymes du xixe siècle : vers la construction d’une identité culturelle nationale
Full text linkOne of the most significant consequences of the emergence of the individualisation of writing and the originality of the literary work is the emergence in many countries of Europe of those that John Mullan defined "one of the great, but neglected, monuments to 19th-century scholarship" (Mullan 2008): the dictionaries of anonymous writers (that of Barbier for France, Paris 1806; that of Melzi for Italy, 1848-1859, with his continuations; that of S. Halkett and J. Laing, for Great Britain, Edinburgh, 1882-88). They constitute another significant testimony of the construction of a national canon including all the works representative of the genius of the nation, even those originally released without a name or with a pseudonym. These dictionaries help us to understand how librarians, collectors and booksellers described the various forms of authorship without an author, making observations, for example, on the habit of certain authors to always use the same pseudonym or to change it according to the different genres of their writing. Although these bibliographic tools have been widely used by scholars, the cultural and intellectual context in which they were conceived and organised was never analysed. One of aims of my lecture is to analyse Gaetano Melzi's way of proceeding in attributions, what his sources are, in case he reveals them. Given the theme of the conference, I will give examples on the attributions of works by 16th century authors considered heterodox
Modelli letterari, eterodossia e autocensura nelle antologie epistolari : il primo libro delle Lettere volgari (Venezia, 1542)
No full textThis essay analyze anthologies of letters, et particularly the first edition of Lettere volgari (Venezia, Paolo Manuzio, 1542), because – unlike the collections of letters of well-known authors– these needed to be legitimised from a publishing point of view, as was demonstrated by the dedicatory epistles which provide indication of the objectives of these anthologies and on how they should be used by readers. The purpose of these epistolary collections was not definitely limited to the function of models for “good writing”. Indeed, if we stress only this aspect there is the risk of seeing only the “normalizing” aspects in the use of the Italian vernacular in a practice (the epistolary mode) which was particularly useful and widespread at various social levels. In fact in overestimating this aspect there is the risk of not understanding the reasons of the extraordinary publishing success. For a variety of reasons, this success was due not only to the practical use to which these books were destined. First of all, because the reader made a quite different use of the text from the one proposed by the publisher. Furthermore, these anthologies were not structured for a comfortable use; they had no subject indexes (which instead we find in books for Secretaries). The books are presented as a succession of texts on the most varied topics, which could have been used to produce other letters, but which at the same time could be read as we read any literary text, for the pleasure and the curiosity of grasping the relationships between well-known individuals (the senders and the recipients of the letters included literary figures, publishers, well-known bishops and cardinals, politicians and sovereigns), to discover the opinion of a famous author on a given work, or to have information on the religious climate and the tensions which touched men who followed up heterodox doctrines. Through some of these anthologies it is possible to reconstruct a circuit of relationships and personal relations based on common intellectual and sometime also religious experiences. As has been pointed out by studies by Anne Jacobson Schutte and Paolo Simoncelli, some of these anthologies, starting from the highly successful Lettere volgari di diversi nobilissimi huomini (Venice: Manuzio, 1542), contained letters which reflected heterodox doctrines
Il ricorso all'anonimato nel Settecento: il caso dei libri di viaggio
Full text linkThe article looks at the use of anonymous authorship in one of the most
successful publishing genres in 18th-century Italy: travel literature. The expedient
of anonymous authorship was not only used for those works which provoked
ecclesiastical criticism on the grounds of immorality or irreligion – philosophy,
novels, treatises defending secular authority – but also in travel writing. A notable
part of 18th-century travel writing resorts to anonymous authorship, especially
the less academic works which provide general political and cultural information.
Yet the issue of anonymity has not attracted the attention of scholars
who have worked on 18th-century Italian travel literature or who have produced
editions of travel journals from the period, especially when the authorship of
the work is in any case known. The texts have been studied for their contents,
particularly for their ideological and anthropological aspects, not for the material
circumstances of their publication. Only very rarely has attention been paid
to the fact that in many cases 18th-century readers of these texts did not know
who their authors were, as is the case with many modern travel guides used
today. Perhaps knowing who had written the book was not important for avid
contemporary readers of travel literature but the absence of an author’s name
from the title-page can provide significant information on how the author or
the printer perceived the work and on the ways in which authors constructed or
suppressed their own identities. The present essay, while not exhaustive, offers
some reflections on why some authors and publishers of travel literature chose
to publish them anonymously by looking at four significant examples: the Saggio
di lettere sopra la Russia by Francesco Algarotti (1760), the Lettere al marchese
Filippo Hercolani sopra alcune particolarità della Baviera ed altri paesi della Germania
by Gian Lodovico Bianconi (1763), the Lettere d’un vago italiano attributed to
Norberto Caimo (4 vols., 1759-1767) and the Lettere sopra l’Inghilterra, Scozia e
Olanda by Luigi Angiolini (2 vols., 1790)
From the Printer’s Mind to the Author’s Hand: Paolo Manuzio and His Tre libri di lettere volgari (1556–1560)
No full textThis article aims to focus on the activity of an important Venetian publisher-editor, Paolo Manuzio, the son of Aldo, who, while resuming his father’s profession, also pursued his intent of becoming a well-known author. More specifically, the article analyses Paolo Manuzio’s contribution to a specific genre, a genre to which he had already contributed as a publisher-editor, that of vernacular epistolary collections. The genre had shown great dynamism and success between the beginning of the 1540s and the end of the 1550s, and Manuzio had edited and published the most important epistolary anthology of the 16th century, the Lettere volgari di diversi nobilissimi huomini et eccellentissimi ingegni scritte in diverse materie, come out in three successive volumes, with the first published in 1542, the second in 1545 and the third in 1564, and had reached a total of 28 editions before 1567.
Between 1556 and 1560 Paolo Manuzio focused his efforts on becoming an author. This is confirmed by the collections of his Latin and vernacular letters which Manuzio edited between 1556 and 1560.
This essay examines the books of Letters written and published by Manuzio in 1556 and in 1560 and precisely the editions with the title Tre libri di Lettere Volgari and Lettere volgari di M. Paolo Manutio divise in Quattro libri, bearing titles which clearly refer to the anthology which had made him famous: the Lettere volgari di diversi nobilissimi huomini. The aim is to analyse the two editions and the conditioning exerted by the cultural , social, political and religious world in which the author lived and worked selecting his letters. Analysing the second edition (1560) is possible to explore the authorial self-censorship. The changes that Paolo made were two-fold. First are foremost, he updated the contents to include events of the intervening three years, and secondly he exercised a measure of self-censorship, omitting certain letters that contained considerations on the most private aspects of his life and that of his relatives, as well as those addressed to men whose religious beliefs had become suspect and were under investigation by the Inquisition for heterodoxy (Francesco Porto, Pietro Carnesecchi). The result was a publication in which Paolo presented himself more effectively than previously as an excellent humanist publisher who had relationships with important intellectuals, prelates and politicians of the time, and who was preparing himself to receive the appointment which would change his life: head of the Papal printing house, planned for June 1561
Comment les paysans russe lisaient leurs classiques : Le cas de Nicolas Gogol
No full textWhat is the study of the reception of a great author by and within a social group? On the one hand, a discourse on the conditions of the reception, which may be described in terms of domination-submission, at least referring to what is perceived. On the other, a discourse on the specific stylistic features of certain textual structures and on the possible tactics of appropriation of those structures by the group. In studying the reception of Nikolai Gogol (1809-1852) by the peasant world, we draw from two types of sources: some re-elaborated versions of Gogol’s works made by popular authors for a peasant audience in the 1880s; the transcriptions of the verbal reactions of groups of peasants during the reading of Gogol’s texts, recorded by village schoolmasters in that period. In our research we try to shed light on the the pressures suffered by the peasants in taking possession of Gogol’s prose. At the same time, we highlight the resistance and the difference in meaning between what is proposed by Gogol’s text and what is made of it by the peasant reader. As a result, the image of Gogol’s work returned by peasants is not a simply mutilated, rounded down, inadequate image. It is a work in which the descriptions of nature, the metaphors and the similes tend to transform into a myriad of characters and micro-stories that intersect and intertwine in the plot designed by the author in a way that seems to educated observers apparently unexpected and incoherent
