Modelli letterari, eterodossia e autocensura nelle antologie epistolari : il primo libro delle Lettere volgari (Venezia, 1542)

This 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.