Abstract

Which were the publishing practices of Literary texts during the xviii and early xix Centuries? Moving from this question, the essay analyses the work of some Italian classical and Italian Contemporary Authors’ editors. The focus is on the editor’s choices: on the one hand the essay examines the problems of past texts’ publishing (and the problems of their transmission); on the other hand, the difficulties regarding the Contemporary writers’ autographs. In these fields, both the transmission variants and the variants introduced by authors (whose relevance is underlined by the authorial philology) are at the centre of the reflexion, because many editors expressed their difficulty to report all the variants and give a representation of changes. Among the publishing experiences concerning classical texts, the essay examines different editions of Petrarch’s Rime (edited by L.A. Muratori, A. Marsand, G. Leopardi) and of the Orlando Furioso; among the Contemporary writers’ works, a specific attention is paid to the edition of Parini’s Opere, edited by F. Reina. The essay introduces also the modern philological ideas of M. Colombo, a little known editor of Tasso’s Gerusalemme Liberata.