In the workshop of Petrarch’s Rime: Carducci and Silvano da Venafro’s commentary

Abstract

In 1876, Carducci published Francesco Petrarca’s Rime sopra argomenti storici morali e diversi with publisher Francesco Vigo of Livorno, while in 1899, together with Severino Ferrari, he published it in its entirety with publisher Sansoni of Florence, based on the newly rediscovered autograph, the Vaticano latino manuscript 3195. During these decades of study, Carducci worked tirelessly on the text of Rerum vulgarium fragmenta. Further evidence of this can be found in the autograph notes preserved on at least three of the editions of the Canzoniere kept in his library in Bologna. Here, we will study the annotations made by Carducci on the first volume of Francesco Petrarca’s Rime with commentary by Tassoni del Muratori and others, published in Padova in 1826-1827. Carducci’s notes are all derived from Silvano da Venafro’s commentary of 1533. The aim is therefore to catalog and analyze Carducci’s glosses on these pages, so as to retrace, also through his quick notes, the preparatory stages of his long work on Petrarca’s Rime.