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A Juridical Didactic Novel

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Felix Reichmann
Felix Reichmann*
Affiliation:
Carl Schurz Memorial Foundation
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Extract

In 1790 (with approbation 1793) a very quaint novel was published in Naples: Tizio o sia le vicende dell' umanita. The very reading of the table of contents is a most baffling experience. The first chapter speaks of Tizio, the hero of the novel, as a boy. In the second he is a girl. He is the paragon of a husband, but in the next pages he deserts his wife. He is born of rich parents and of poor parents. He is a slave … and a member of the Roman nobility. He is a gentleman—and a criminal, a pauper and fabulously rich. On one page he gives lavishly to the poor and needy, but on the next page he is one of the most antisocial of human beings. He is a scholar and an illiterate: has the most influential public position … and is an outlaw. He dies as an infant and of old age.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 60 , Issue 1: Number 1 Part 1 , March 1945 , pp. 157 - 160
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1945

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References

1 TIZIO / o sia / le vicende / dell' umanita' / opera / composta da / Filippo de Jorio / avvocato nella Regia udienza / di Lucera / [vignette] Napoli mdccxc [vol. 2, 1793] / presso Domenico Sangiacomo / Con licenza de Superieri / 2 vols. 15 cm. i. 132, 242 pp. 11, genealogical table; ii. 440 pp. 11.

2 Francesco Antonio Astore (1742–99) Neapolitan philosopher and patriot. His main work is Filosofia dell' eloquenza (Naples, 1783).

3 Benedetto Croce, “Aneddoti di storia civile e letteraria, xii.” Crilica, 1929, p. 158.

4 Similar to the use of “John Doe” today.

5 Entretiens sur la plurulitée des mondes (1768).

6 Ferdinando Galiani (1728–87), generally called Abbé Galiani, was a famous Italian political economist. Living in Paris, as legation-secretary of the Neopolitan embassy, he became a friend of the French encyclopedists. His outstanding publication is Dialogues sur le commerce des blès (Paris, 1764).

7 Vita dell' abate F. Galiani (Naples, 1788), p. 59.

8 Gordon du Persel, De Vusage des romans (Paris, 1734).

9 Lodovico Antonio Muratori (1672–1750) Deila perfetta poesia italiana (Modena, 1706), ii, 91.

10 P. Huet, De L'origine des romans (Paris, 1670).

11 Borcherdt, Geschichte des Romans in Deutschland (1926), 2 vols.

12 Koster, Die deutsche Literatur der Aufklärungszeit (1925), p. 223.

13 Concari, Il Settecento, p. 277.

14 Mangain, Evolution intellectuelle de L'Italie de 1657/1750 (Paris, 1909), p. 324. Carini, L'Arcadia (Rome, 1891).