Article

Maria Antonietta Terzoli

Dediche leopardiane II: lavori eruditi e falsi dell'adolescenza e della giovinezza (1815-1825)

The first part of this research, concerning the Leopardian dedications of the childhood and adolescence (1808-1815), was published in the first issue of «Margini» (2007, 1). The research is now concerned with the years of the adolescence and youth (1815-1825), with special focus on dedications premised to erudite works or declared as such. The typological and formal variety of the first years is substituted by an absolute homogeneity: dedications of epistolary sort, in prose and in Italian, with an only exception (epigraphic and Latin) of uncertain dating. Anyway, an intellectual or affective kind of relationship between the author and his dedicatees remains. The essay ends with the analysis of a dedication premised to a particular forgery, Inno a Nettuno (1817), which marks the first publication of Leopardi as a poet: behind the stratagem of a translation of an antique Greek hymn and with the protection of a rich para-textual apparatus (dedication, Avvertimento and Note), which − with his status of presupposed truth, reinforced by the marginal collocation − plays a role of absolute highlight to credit the presumed discovery and to build the multiple and diffracted images of a very refined and unconventional pasticheur.

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Article

Ulrich Gäbler

Eine Basler Dedikation von 1632.
Stadtpfarrer Theodor Zwinger widmet Stadtarzt Matthias Harscher eine Plato-Ausgabe

In February 1632, the first minister of Basel's main church, Theodor Zwinger (1597-1654), needed medical assistance. He was attended to by his longtime friend Matthias Harscher (1596-1651), the city's physician. Gratefully, Zwinger dedicated Plato's Opera to him. The edition was published in Paris by Henry Stephanus, in 1578. This gift showed Zwinger's special appreciation of Platonism for shaping his reformed theological thinking.

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Article

Monica Bianco

Lodovico Castelvetro e la «intitolatione gratiosa de' libri a spetial persona»

Among the four works by Lodovico Castelvetro printed while he was alive, only one work, Poetica d'Aristotele vulgarizzata e sposta, was accompanied with a dedication of the author to Maximilian II of Habsburg. Through the analysis of the two most significant writings − Giunta al primo libro delle 'Prose' di M. Pietro Bembo, where the very first treatment of the genre 'epistola dedicatoria' appears, and Corretione d'alcune cose del 'Dialogo delle lingue' di Benedetto Varchi − the essay illustrates the hostility of Castelvetro towards the very widespread praxis of dedicating printed books, that was a symbol of the servility to which too often the intellectuals of that times were prone to submit. Proud of his independence and his consistency, when Castelvetro chose to thank with a dedication Maximilian II for the hospitality and protection offered to him and his brother, he found a way to draft, against any rule of that "genre", an ackward excuse to the real dedicatees of all his works: the readers.

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Article

Paola Allegretti

Dante e Brunetto sui «duri margini» (Inf. xv 1): strategie di risarcimento postumo

The Rettorica by Brunetto Latini, a translation − from Latin with comment − has never been taken into account as a source for Inferno xv. However, it provides a rhetorical model apt to introduce the damned and their sins. The model consists in an introductory pattern, with specific rhetorical rules, that the infernal narration repeats a thousand times. As Dante meets Brunetto in the Inferno we can see this opening pattern made of salutazione and dedica somehow embodied in the gestures of both characters. This could be demonstrated by the formula in rhyme «glorioso porto»(Inf. xv 56), recall by Brunetto, a formula which is the senhal of the unknown dedicatee of the Rettorica.

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Article

Harald Fricke e Deborah Wetterwald

Dédicace et paratextes: l'école de Goettingen. Rapport de recherche

In Germany, especially in Göttingen around 1970, literary studies focused on paratextual phenomena even before the publications of Gérard Genette. Initiated by Wolfgang Kayser and under the auspices of Christian Wagenknecht, the so-called "Göttingen School" came to existence. Among its numerous academic undertakings, it analysed the history of the literary dedication. Wagenknecht himself defined the concept and notion of a literary dedication, in particular by developing a typology as well as a systematic nomenclature. He differentiates into five variants of dedication: On a plaque, through a speech, in a letter, through gesture, and in an annotation. These categories triggered the Göttingen School to produce a considerable number of further studies on paratextual phenomena, distinguishing between the act of dedicating and the lyrics of a dedication.

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