La dedica

A dedication
History of an editing strategy
Preface by Lina Bolzoni

The dedication is a standardized text with identifiable language topics and numerous typical recurrent places. Therefore it’s a small text that evolves slowly and maintains similar characteristics in all times, to the point that, for example, the typological dedication of Baroque will be widely used also by the intellectuals that were openly adverse to the degeneration of the seventeenth-century style.
In the first part of the study, the author analyses the forms of textual analysis, and the specification of the characteristics of the system and its rules. The specific characteristics of the 16th century dedications transpire since it is in the 17th century the structures and mechanisms consolidate the structure and the main sites of the typical sites of epistolary dedication.
The changes due to the influence of the 17th century and the practice of dedications during the 18th century are analyzed in those specific chapters in the third part, in which the various cases of the effective use of the instrument of dedications.
The second part has the objective of testifying the theoretical characteristics relative to the use of dedications, at this time written by supporters of this system with the intent to denounce abuse and deviation, or simply to reintroduce the efficacy of this instrument for the authors; sometimes written in a controversial way to derogate from such a strategy, in which way wishing to criticize and place the dignity of the authors in a bad light.
An approach to the phenomenology of dedications that implies a general evaluation of this process that may manifest itself in a recount that could be ironic on the failure of an unfortunate poet or in the anthological republication of dedicated letters proposed as an example of a large expansion of this habit.

Marco Paoli
Director of the State Library of Lucca, Marco Paoli was born in Lucca in 1952. He is the author of many studies on the history of art, the history of illuminations, and the history of precious publishing. He directs the “Rara Volumina” magazine. With Maria Pacini Fazzi Editore he has published “Arte e committenza privata ne Trecento e nel Quattrocento”. Artistic and cultural editorial productions: Il monumento di Ilaria del Carretto nella Cattedrale di Lucca. Catalogo descrittivo.
An example of a refined collection between 18th and 19th centuries; the gathering of the 15th century Tuscan editions. The incunabulum of the State Library of Lucca. Descriptive catalogue.

Format cm. 17×24
416 pages

Available product forms