Books by Rosamaria Loretelli
This is a bibliography of seventeenth- to eighteenth-century chapbooks on real men and women cond... more This is a bibliography of seventeenth- to eighteenth-century chapbooks on real men and women condemned for murder and theft. This bibliography contains 3,000 entries, each with author, long title, date, book size, type of crime, library and shelfmark. It is opened by 31-page introduction.
This book follows two paths, bringing them together. It outlines the history of reading from anci... more This book follows two paths, bringing them together. It outlines the history of reading from ancient Greece to the eighteenth century and weaves into it a history of narrative forms since the oral epic. The eighteenth century experienced a cognitive ‘reading revolution’ during which reading spread as a silent and totally dematerialised practice.
In the eighteenth century appeared the novel, a literary genre whose novelty consists, according to the thesis in favour of which the book brings evidence, in making the printed words alone take on all the load of meaning and emotion that reading aloud previously entrusted also to voice, gestures, and pauses. Thus transformed, narrative developed a new sense of interiority and a temporal dimension which characterized the human subject from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. A subject from which the present ‘revolution’ of the technologies of the word is progressively leading us away.
The first chapter briefly illustrates the thesis of the book.
The second chapter delineates a history of reading in relation to the history of the physical supports of texts.
The third chapter shows how since the oral epic, narrative was modelled historically in such a way as to find access to the minds and emotions of their intended listeners/readers according to the physical supports of texts most common in their times.
The four chapter dwells on the eighteenth-century, connecting in a totally new way physical supports of texts, reading practices with narrative forms and eighteenth-century narrative theories.
The fifth chapter tries to place the whole argument in a theoretical setting.
This book deals with the Spanish picaresque, its seventeenth-century European translations and in... more This book deals with the Spanish picaresque, its seventeenth-century European translations and influence. Particular attention is given to the British chapbooks and booklets on real thieves, burglars and highwaymen whose biographies were modelled on the Spanish picaresque. The final chapter of the book discusses eighteenth-century British great novelists, showing how, although they knew and partly imitated the Spanish picaresque, the sense of progress which informs their novels imposed telling modifications of the narrative structure.
The essays in this collection range across literature, aesthetics, music and art, and explore suc... more The essays in this collection range across literature, aesthetics, music and art, and explore such themes as the dynamics of change in eighteenth-century aesthetics; time, modernity and the picturesque; the function of graphic ornaments in eighteenth-century texts; imaginary voyages as a literary genre; the genesis of children's literature; the Italian opera and musical theory in Frances Burney's novels; Italian and British art theories; and patterns of cultural transfers and of book circulation between Britain and Italy in the eighteenth century. Collectively they epitomise the concerns and approaches of scholars working on the long eighteenth century at this challenging and exciting time. In the absence of universally agreed, overarching interpretations of the cultural history of the long eighteenth century, these papers pave the way for the ultimate emergence of such explanations.
The focus of this collection of essays is the two-way relation of Cesare Beccaria's "On Crimes an... more The focus of this collection of essays is the two-way relation of Cesare Beccaria's "On Crimes and Punishments" with Britain. It is, to the best of our knowledge, the first to be entirely devoted to this subject.
Introduction (pp 7-32) and the Italian translations of Mary Astell's A Serious Proposal to the La... more Introduction (pp 7-32) and the Italian translations of Mary Astell's A Serious Proposal to the Ladies (pp33-83) and of Daniel Defoe's An Academy for Women (84-93).
Papers by Rosamaria Loretelli
Contents: Michael Harris: Murder in print: representations of crime and the law c. 1660-1760 - Ro... more Contents: Michael Harris: Murder in print: representations of crime and the law c. 1660-1760 - Rosamaria Loretelli: Trial by cheap print - Roberto De Romanis: Camouflaged identities, criminal writings - Lennard J. Davis: Criminal statements. Homosexuality and textuality in the account of Jan Svilt - Ruth Perry: Good girls and fallen women: representations of prostitutes in eighteenth-century English fiction - Janet Todd: The German Princess: criminalities of gender and class - Franco Marenco: The invention of the enemy. Expansionism and the ideology of exclusion in early seventeenth-century England - Ian A. Bell: Postcards of the hanging. The representation of crime in William Hogarth's Industry and Idleness - Marinella Salari: Criminal voices from beyond the grave.
L'Asino d'oro, 1992
This article deals with sixteenth- to eighteenth-century British and Italian ballads and chapbook... more This article deals with sixteenth- to eighteenth-century British and Italian ballads and chapbooks about people condemned to the death penalty for murder and theft.
Studi Settecenteschi, 1992
Il contributo ha l’obiettivo di chiarire la trasformazione della figura del don Chisciotte nel co... more Il contributo ha l’obiettivo di chiarire la trasformazione della figura del don Chisciotte nel contesto inglese tra Seicento e Settecento. Nel Seicento il romanzo spagnolo era associato alla letteratura del popolo. La mentalità “hidalga”, che teneva in spregio il lavoro e si crogiolava nei formalismi e nei rituali, cozzava con quella del cittadino inglese operoso e puritano. Nel Settecento ritroviamo sì il personaggio comico ma che insegna qualcosa alla società tramite l’eccesso delle sue azioni di cui è consapevole e che gli procura danni e disgrazie. In questo modo egli mostra che la moderazione è una virtù in cui l’uomo non può rinunciare
Caroline Patey, Cynthia E. Roman, Georges Letissier (eds.), "Enduring Presence: William Hogarth's British and European Afterlives", 2021
Much has been written on various aspects of Hogarth's relation with the narrative of his time. Ho... more Much has been written on various aspects of Hogarth's relation with the narrative of his time. However, critics have so far failed to tackle the way he managed to satisfy the human taste for variety and need for unity at the same time – an issue that has been a crucial consideration ever since Artistotle's "Poetics". The present article tries to prove that this is a pivotal aspect of "The Analysis of Beauty", a treatise which famously champions variety. One of the main foci of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century treatises on the epic and the romance viewed unity and variety in terms of opposition: more unity unavoidably entailed a loss of variety; more variety, the destruction of unity. Writers in the eighteenth century erased this incompatibility by revolutionizing the whole perspective they took. If, previously, unity and variety has been seen as qualities of the object (narrative, in this case), in the eighteenth century they started to be considered as the outcome of the relation between object and subject; in other words, their possible reconciliation was localized in the mind of a perceiving subject confronted by an object having a form consonant with the human mind. The author argues that this idea, which had an enormous impact on the new eighteenth-century novelist paradigm, also lies at the heart of "The Analysis of Beauty" and of Hogarth's conception of the serpentine line. The present essay draws evidence from a close analysis of Hogarth's treatise, and highlights some points of contact with David Hume's "Treatise" and his "Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding".
Textus: English Studies in Italy, 2019
This article maintains that among the many 'inventions' the eighteenth century can claim as its o... more This article maintains that among the many 'inventions' the eighteenth century can claim as its own, the invention of suspense is certainly not the least important. After bringing evidence of an increasing presence of the word in novels and periodical essays, the article shows how, through trial and error, novelists over the century developed a narrative technique which aroused suspense in readers.
Lidia De Michelis, Lia Guerra, Frank O'Gorman (eds.), "Politics and Culture in 18th-Century Anglo-Italian Encounters: Entangled Histories", 2019
Ann Radcliffe's "The Italian" was translated into French by French encyclopédiste André Morellet ... more Ann Radcliffe's "The Italian" was translated into French by French encyclopédiste André Morellet and into Italian by Giovanni De Coureil, an intellectual from Pisa admirer of the French philosophes and of English culture, who served at the head of the short-lived Tuscan Republic at the end of the century.
Cosmo Comparative Studies in Modernism, Dec 27, 2013
Gli studi letterari continuano a non godere di gran buona salute. A venti anni esatti dall'allarm... more Gli studi letterari continuano a non godere di gran buona salute. A venti anni esatti dall'allarme lanciato da Cesare Segre in Notizie dalla crisi. Dove va la critica letteraria? (1993), infatti, la crisi permane pur essendo cambiato il panorama. Segre attaccava il decostruzionismo, la critica reader-oriented, la neoermeneutica, tendenze allora molto forti; e lo faceva in nome della filologia, rivendicando anche la necessità di un'attenzione a tutt'e tre i momenti della filiera letteraria, dall'autore, al testo, al lettore. Otto anni dopo, in Ritorno alla critica, ripeteva: "La stagnazione continua". Esauritosi nel frattempo spontaneamente il decostruzionismo, i bersagli di Segre rimanevano una certa critica reader-oriented e la neoermeneutica: Oggi, generalmente per input stranieri, in prevalenza tedeschi, molti movimenti critici fanno centro sull'ermeneutica, ma non si pongono nemmeno il problema iniziale, eppure determinante, dell'interpretazione letterale; anzi considerano assiomatica l'incomprensibilità del testo, cui andrebbe sostituito il "discorso sul testo", di cui si dilettano (Segre 2001: 88).
Lire en Europe. Textes, formes, lecteurs (XVIIIe-XXIe siècle), Sous la direction de Lodovica Braida et Brigitte Ouvry-Vial, Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2020
Les formes narratives de l'épopée orale et du roman.
Le contexte narratif. Le contexte narratif ... more Les formes narratives de l'épopée orale et du roman.
Le contexte narratif. Le contexte narratif dand "Perceval" de Chrétien de Troyes. Le contexte dans "Orgeuil et Préjujée" de Jane Austen. Une observation conclusive en terme d'histoire culturelle.
EX LIBRIS. I libri e noi, Bononia University Press, 2017
In dictionaries, silence is prevalently defined in the negative and in opposition: not as what it... more In dictionaries, silence is prevalently defined in the negative and in opposition: not as what it is but as what it is not. Silence is absence of sound , of speech, of noise; silence is omission of mention, withholding of information. Dictionaries prevalently define silence not as language, but as lack of language. However, both in life and in literature silences are meaningful. In life, it is the body which gives them meaning: postures, glances, gestures etc. This is also what gave meaning to silences in Mdieval and Renaissance narratives which were read aloud. But what about novels, narratives which the eighteenth century moulded for silent readers? This short essay shows how "What Maisie knew" activates an experience of silence in readers.
Ugo M. Olivieri e Marco Castagna, Il dono dell'arte, 2017
La cosa più importante che i romanzi ci rivelano è che esistono altre persone. Partendo da un'ide... more La cosa più importante che i romanzi ci rivelano è che esistono altre persone. Partendo da un'idea di empatia come attenzione all'altro - idea che è in Simone Weil e in Iris Murdoch - l'articolo illustra la somiglianza, in tema di empatia, tra la riflessione del filosofo scozzese Lord Kames e le acquisizioni delle ricerche neuroscientifiche sui neuroni specchio.
Diciottesimo secolo, 2017
Following the trails of Pietro Molini, an Italian publisher residing in London whose name appear... more Following the trails of Pietro Molini, an Italian publisher residing in London whose name appears in Alessandro Verri's letters to his brother Pietro, and of John Almon, the publisher of the first English translation of Cesare Beccaria's "On Crimes and Punishments" (1767), this article sheds light on the editorial, political and cultural environments in which the translation came into being. It also illustrates how, when Beccaria and Verri were in Paris in October and November 1766, they repeatedly met John Wilkes, who was living there in exile.
Diciottesimo secolo, 2019
Unlike the first French translation, which has received adequate scholarly attention, the first E... more Unlike the first French translation, which has received adequate scholarly attention, the first English translation, printed in London in 1767 for the Whig bookseller , journalist and advocate for the freedom of the press John Almon, has as yet been neglected by research. Following on from my previous essay, which investigated the editorial and political contexts, this study focuses on the translated text, enquiring about its sources and faithfulness to the original. Indeed, a collation with one of the two Italian sixth editions (1766) and with Morellet's version (dated 1766, but printed on 28 December 1765) revealed that this text, which was the main channel for the dissemination of Beccaria's ideas in the English speaking world, used both the Italian original and the French version as sources. In addition and most strikingly, the collation also showed that the translation contains modifications of significant passages, which appear in neither source. They intervene surprisingly on passages whose interpretation is still debated among present day scholars. The present article interprets changes introduced in chapter II ("Of the Right to Punish") and in chapter XXVIII ("Of the Punishment of Death").
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Books by Rosamaria Loretelli
In the eighteenth century appeared the novel, a literary genre whose novelty consists, according to the thesis in favour of which the book brings evidence, in making the printed words alone take on all the load of meaning and emotion that reading aloud previously entrusted also to voice, gestures, and pauses. Thus transformed, narrative developed a new sense of interiority and a temporal dimension which characterized the human subject from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. A subject from which the present ‘revolution’ of the technologies of the word is progressively leading us away.
The first chapter briefly illustrates the thesis of the book.
The second chapter delineates a history of reading in relation to the history of the physical supports of texts.
The third chapter shows how since the oral epic, narrative was modelled historically in such a way as to find access to the minds and emotions of their intended listeners/readers according to the physical supports of texts most common in their times.
The four chapter dwells on the eighteenth-century, connecting in a totally new way physical supports of texts, reading practices with narrative forms and eighteenth-century narrative theories.
The fifth chapter tries to place the whole argument in a theoretical setting.
Papers by Rosamaria Loretelli
Le contexte narratif. Le contexte narratif dand "Perceval" de Chrétien de Troyes. Le contexte dans "Orgeuil et Préjujée" de Jane Austen. Une observation conclusive en terme d'histoire culturelle.
In the eighteenth century appeared the novel, a literary genre whose novelty consists, according to the thesis in favour of which the book brings evidence, in making the printed words alone take on all the load of meaning and emotion that reading aloud previously entrusted also to voice, gestures, and pauses. Thus transformed, narrative developed a new sense of interiority and a temporal dimension which characterized the human subject from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. A subject from which the present ‘revolution’ of the technologies of the word is progressively leading us away.
The first chapter briefly illustrates the thesis of the book.
The second chapter delineates a history of reading in relation to the history of the physical supports of texts.
The third chapter shows how since the oral epic, narrative was modelled historically in such a way as to find access to the minds and emotions of their intended listeners/readers according to the physical supports of texts most common in their times.
The four chapter dwells on the eighteenth-century, connecting in a totally new way physical supports of texts, reading practices with narrative forms and eighteenth-century narrative theories.
The fifth chapter tries to place the whole argument in a theoretical setting.
Le contexte narratif. Le contexte narratif dand "Perceval" de Chrétien de Troyes. Le contexte dans "Orgeuil et Préjujée" de Jane Austen. Une observation conclusive en terme d'histoire culturelle.
This fact constitutes a challenge for us all, literary historians and critics ...