My paper will focus on the European circulation of Catullus’ Liber between sixteenth and seventh century when the growing book market makes accessible new editions of Latin texts to a wide and international audience. The textual difficulties of carmina and many corruptions make Catullan Liber inaccessible for long time. In Italy as in France, Belgium and Netherlands, the fortune of Catullus was accentuated when philological studies and the findings of the humanists made possible the work of arrangement and critical interpretation. I will argue that, these peculiar troubles in understanding and translating the text influenced significantly the production and diffusion of its printed edition, although in the last quarter of the fifteenth century a series of incunabula was widely available. Catullus lacked a comment unlike his 'colleagues' Propertius and Tibullus, published for the first time with the Catullan Liber in the editio princeps of 1472, and it was still studies also later, especially with the publication of Avanzio Aldine edition in 1502, and with the relative 'counterfeits' European (see the Lyons edition of 1503). With these editions started a change of perspective, the text become more conveniently accessible to his readers, learned however, and interested in scholars. Carmina were studied in the inner circle of the University: so in Naples with Pucci, in Rome with Valerian, so in Lyon and Paris, where after about 1530, after the stage of moral disapproval, poets such as Dolet, Macrin and Bèze mimicked carmina in their literary production to the transformation wrought by Ronsard, who made Catullus a lyric poet French. None, however, that had ventured in the operation of translation of the Book, in its acquisition into a national language to disclosure it to a wider audiece of small literary circles. In Italy, for example, you will have to wait until the sixteenth century, moreover, to have only three versions, each one of only 64 poem. Not better in France where, despite the interest in the poet Veronese has manifested itself at the start of the '500 and despite Muret wrote in Paris his commentary on Catullus, later published in Venice in 1554, the first translation from Liber only dates back to the seventeenth century. My intention, therefore, is to investigate the ways of the reception of Catullus in European environment, due to the wide circulation of codes and printed editions in '5-600, just across the channel of translations in an attempt to explain the delay, unique when compared to the pace with which it will be translated into the following periods, according with the issues of catullian poetry, in terms of text (of which test variae lectiones and amendments), no less than literary (given the highly metaphorical language, or more often suggestive, of carmina), tough test for anyone who wants to attempt a translation of the 'Book' or part of it.

De Luca, A.L. (2016). «Catullum Numquam Antea Lectum […] Lego»: a Short Analysis of Catullus’ Fortune in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Leiden : Brill [10.1163/9789004316638_016].

«Catullum Numquam Antea Lectum […] Lego»: a Short Analysis of Catullus’ Fortune in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries

DE LUCA, ALINA LAURA
2016

Abstract

My paper will focus on the European circulation of Catullus’ Liber between sixteenth and seventh century when the growing book market makes accessible new editions of Latin texts to a wide and international audience. The textual difficulties of carmina and many corruptions make Catullan Liber inaccessible for long time. In Italy as in France, Belgium and Netherlands, the fortune of Catullus was accentuated when philological studies and the findings of the humanists made possible the work of arrangement and critical interpretation. I will argue that, these peculiar troubles in understanding and translating the text influenced significantly the production and diffusion of its printed edition, although in the last quarter of the fifteenth century a series of incunabula was widely available. Catullus lacked a comment unlike his 'colleagues' Propertius and Tibullus, published for the first time with the Catullan Liber in the editio princeps of 1472, and it was still studies also later, especially with the publication of Avanzio Aldine edition in 1502, and with the relative 'counterfeits' European (see the Lyons edition of 1503). With these editions started a change of perspective, the text become more conveniently accessible to his readers, learned however, and interested in scholars. Carmina were studied in the inner circle of the University: so in Naples with Pucci, in Rome with Valerian, so in Lyon and Paris, where after about 1530, after the stage of moral disapproval, poets such as Dolet, Macrin and Bèze mimicked carmina in their literary production to the transformation wrought by Ronsard, who made Catullus a lyric poet French. None, however, that had ventured in the operation of translation of the Book, in its acquisition into a national language to disclosure it to a wider audiece of small literary circles. In Italy, for example, you will have to wait until the sixteenth century, moreover, to have only three versions, each one of only 64 poem. Not better in France where, despite the interest in the poet Veronese has manifested itself at the start of the '500 and despite Muret wrote in Paris his commentary on Catullus, later published in Venice in 1554, the first translation from Liber only dates back to the seventeenth century. My intention, therefore, is to investigate the ways of the reception of Catullus in European environment, due to the wide circulation of codes and printed editions in '5-600, just across the channel of translations in an attempt to explain the delay, unique when compared to the pace with which it will be translated into the following periods, according with the issues of catullian poetry, in terms of text (of which test variae lectiones and amendments), no less than literary (given the highly metaphorical language, or more often suggestive, of carmina), tough test for anyone who wants to attempt a translation of the 'Book' or part of it.
2016
International Exchange in the Early Modern Book World
329
342
De Luca, A.L. (2016). «Catullum Numquam Antea Lectum […] Lego»: a Short Analysis of Catullus’ Fortune in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Leiden : Brill [10.1163/9789004316638_016].
De Luca, Alina Laura
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11585/553554
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