Abstract
Magical texts enjoyed a very wide circulation during the early modern period. Their nature allowed them to satisfy a variety of publics and interests: they represented a popular genre across different social and cultural hierarchies. The particular responses which magical books and papers elicited through reading and reproduction make them a very interesting case study for the analysis of the modes of proposal and reception of texts. The circular relationship between reading and writing — incidentally, an inevitable by-product of censorship — allows us not only to establish the impact of this literature on readers and users, but also to witness the process of constant re-elaboration of contents and forms. Elastic par excellence, addressing both men and women, the literate as well as the illiterate, in early modern Venice magical books and papers were widely popular artefacts. The paper aims to portray some of the key features of this output, by considering the modes and procedures through which texts were created and reading was enacted.
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