Gli affanni della letteratura nella corrispondenza di Guidubaldo Benamati ad Angelico Aprosio (1629-1652).

Porcellini-Slawinski, M. P. (2002) Gli affanni della letteratura nella corrispondenza di Guidubaldo Benamati ad Angelico Aprosio (1629-1652). Aprosiana, X. pp. 11-67. ISSN 1590-993X

Abstract

Following a previous publication (in Storici, filosofi e cultura umanistica a Gubbio tra Cinque e Seicento, ed. P. Castelli & G. Pellegrini, Spoleto, 1998, pp. 539-98) which reconstructed the career of this minor but representative 17th-century letterato, the present edition of the letters which Benamati (c1595-1653) addressed to critic and bibliophile Angelico Aprosio (1607-1681) reconsiders and expands on the earlier work. Where that relied on Benamati's published work, the official account of a literary career, these thirty-five previously unknown letters reveal the financial and human realities beneath the careful self-construction of the 'authorised version'. Their transcription (pp. 31-67) is accompanied by elucidatory notes (contexts, persons and literary works referred to), and prefaced by an introduction (pp. 11-30) drawing out their wider significance for our understanding of the material conditions of writing in the seventeenth century. A picture emerges of low interest and even lower support on the part of princely patrons; increasing reliance on the purses and vanity of lesser nobles; the sacrifices and humiliations which an author of modest means underwent to see his work in print; the 'networking' by which he sought to publicise it, attract prospective patrons, or simply sell off copies of the books printed at his own expense. What also emerges is something of the reasons for the importance that Benamati's and Aprosio's 'literary hero', G .B. Battista Marino, had for letterati of their generation as a model for the successful negotiation of these difficulties, and the prizes at stake in the 'profession of letters'. This has less to do with financial gain than the affirmation and negotiation of status on the part of individuals and groups on the margins of court society.