Date Published
9/5/2019
Author(s)
Twenty-one autograph letters by Giuseppe Baretti (1719-1789), for the most part unknown, are for the first time collected in this volume, transcribed and annotated in their entirety: they are addressed to the Mantuan poet and physician Vittore Vettori (1697-1763) and date back to the years 1741-1746, the most intense period of literary apprenticeship of young Baretti. They document the use of personal correspondence as a site of linguistic experimentation and literary critical debate, as well as a means of supporting one’s own education, representation and self-promotion. In addition to allowing us to better define Baretti’s human and professional profile in this first training phase of his literary career, they help to disclose the communicative and immersive nature of the way he studied and learned, a way that he began to fine-tune then and would never abandon.