Hebrew Printing in Sabbioneta 1 AFFO, Ireneo - Schulz-Falster Rare ...

First edition of a curious language handbook for business travellers and
buyers. Arranged in alphabetical order the names of obscure products and
base materials are given in Wve diVerent languages, all apparently relevant
for doing business in Nürnberg. Predominant are metal tools and objects
such a Wre-cocks, tongs, pincers and bookbinding tools, but also musical
instruments such as Jew’s harps.
Another edition appeared in 1810, and the work was presumably incorporated
into Gaetani’s later publication ‘Il vero genio epistorale mercantile’.
Uncommon, KVK and OCLC list only the 1810 edition at Munich.
Neapolitan Dialect
42 [GALIANI, Ferdinando.] Del Dialetto Napoletano. Naples,
Vincenzo Mazzola-Vocola, 1779. £2800
8vo, pp. 184; woodcut initials and head and tail-pieces; some light
spotting and browning due to paper quality; paper fault to lower
corner of title page; contemporary full vellum over boards, gilt-lettering
directly to spine, a few small wormholes to spine, but an attractive copy.
Rare Wrst edition of the Wrst scientiWc study of the Neapolitan dialect by the
economist and enlightenment writer Galiani. He gives a detailed history and
grammar of this dialect, which he maintains was the primitive language of
Italy. In his preface Galiani stresses the importance of dialect and language
as a patriotic bond and means for preserving national heritage even in times
of political and social turbulence. He defends the Neapolitan dialect against
the inXuences of Tuscan Italian, and points to the importance of dialect
poetry for Neapolitan literature. He begins with a general assessment of
the characteristics of Neapolitan dialect and its grammar, covering syntax,
spelling etc. In the second part he deals with the origin of the language, and
its changing fortunes. He covers Sicilian and Puglian language, and traces
its inXuence in Italian. He gives numerous bi-lingual examples from Boccaccio,
relevant glossaries, and concludes with a catalogue of works written
in Neapolitan dialect.
A second enlarged edition, published ten years later, also included the
beginnings of a dictionary of words unique to the Neapolitan dialect.
Ferdinando Galiani (1728–1787), a Neapolitan envoy to the Court of
Paris, is better known as the author of Della Moneta, ‘the best of many treatises
published in Italy on money’. During his ten years in France Galiani
had immersed himself in the ideas of the French enlightenment, but kept
intact his Italian heritage, the ideas of Vico and Machiavelli, and his interest
in the Italian language. He was an important Wgure in the principal salons
of Paris, and was in close contact with the most inXuential Wgures of the
time.
Not in Zaunmüller, or Robert A. Hall, A bibliography of Italian linguistics, 1941,
who only records the second edition (Hall 3357); OCLC records copies at Berkeley,
Yale, Harvard, Maryland, Austin, Texas, Cornell and Oxford.
catalogue fourteen