Women and Feminine Images in Giacomo Leopardi, 1797–1837: Bicentenary Essays by Lynne Press, Pamela Williams (review)

Abstract

MLR, 98.4, 2003 1009 Part 11traces in more detail the formal evolution of the printed book of verse as a material object up to 1530. Cannata focuses firston paper, as the most expensive item in the production process. She sets out to establish the dimensions ofthe sheets found in these books and concludes that their measurements remained largely stable throughout the Quattro and Cinquecento. (Here the discussion might have brought in Paul Needham's study of the paper stocks used by Aldo Manuzio.) Developing the work of codicologists such as Carla Bozzolo and Ezio Ornato, Cannata then brings in questions of layout and typeface, and seeks to explain why octavo editions with single-column texts proved more popular than quarto editions with the text in two columns, when the production costs of the two forms were similar. The main reason, she argues, is that the octavo model had a superior level of 'legibility', a term with which 'si vuole alludere alla complessa questione di quale fosse la tipologia attesa per un determinato tipo di libro' (p. 183). Cultural and aesthetic factors, in other words, were as important as economic ones. This is a plausible argument, in support ofwhich it would have been useful to know more about the existing expectations of readers of verse in manuscript form. Cannata goes on to provide a series of tables and graphs that quantify the changing forms of books of verse in various ways: through the number of sheets used, the 'coefficiente di sfruttamento della pagina' (the relationship between the height of a line of type and the height of the printed area of the page, a ratio that provides an indication of the density of the printed text: pp. 186-87), and the area leftblank forthe margins. She concludes by noting a rise in production costs for books printed at the end of the third decade of the Cinquecento. As if in reaction to the closing of the gap between popular and elite books, these years brought a revival of more expensively produced books with a more spacious layout, in particular the influential editions of lyric verse by Trissino, Sannazaro, and Bembo, which used a single-column layout in either quarto or (in the case of Trissino) royal octavo format. Cannata's book suggests how fruitful it can be to examine the interaction of the histories ofthe book and of reading and the history of literature. The success of such a study depends on an unusual blend of skills, and an important contribution in this case is made by Cannata's expertise in the culture of this crucial period in the development of Italian literature and the Italian language. Thus, forinstance, while mapping trends in the printing industry, she also studies carefully the roles played by editors, notably Angelo Colocci, in the posthumous promotion of the status of Serafino Aquilano and Antonio Tebaldeo (the textual history ofthe latter's canzonieri is examined in detail in Part 1, with due attention to the continuing role of manuscript circulation); and she shows due appreciation of the inspired initiatives of individual users of print such as Manuzio and Bembo. Her book is also valuable because it documents much of the bibliographical evidence on which her interpretations are based: Part 111includes a general 'short-title' catalogue of 512 collections of lyric verse printed in Italy between 1470 and 1530, and a more detailed descriptive catalogue of specific copies of 255 of these editions. University of Leeds Brian Richardson Womenand Feminine Images in Giacomo Leopardi, 1J9J-183J: Bicentenary Essays. By Lynne Press and Pamela Williams. (Studies in ltalian Literature, 7) Lewiston: Mellen. 1999. xiv + 272pp. ?74.95. ISBN 0-7734-7929-5. This collection of essays, one of the many volumes designed to mark the bicentenary of Leopardi's birth, deals with the place of 'the feminine' in Leopardi's work. The authors have each contributed three essays and the topics examined include the in? fluence ofthe women in Leopardi's life,the impact of women writers on his thinking, ioio Reviews and the feminine in his poetry: the female figures and 'feminized' images?Nature and the Moon. The firstchapter, by Lynne Press, 'The Legacy of Reason...