«Merge Record #»«Title» - Schulz-Falster Rare Books

The engraved frontispiece is particularly appealing, showing a 'salumeria' with
numerous sausages, and hams suspended from the ceiling and a boar being
slaughtered in the background. An elegant customer converses with the shopkeeper,
and takes an appreciative whiff at a salami, while his dog is about to steal a sausage
from the table.
Bing 852; Lapiccirella 170; Simon 1342; Westbury p. 197.
30.
[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 first edition of the first scientific 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 influences 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 origin of the
language, and its changing fortunes. He covers Sicilian and Puglian language, and
traces its influence in Italian. He gives numerous bi-lingual examples from Boccaccio,
relevant glossaries, and concludes with a catalogue of works written in Neapolitan
dialect.
The second edition, published ten years later also included the beginnings of a
dictionary of words unique to the Neapolitan dialect, later completed by Galiani's
fellow academicians and entitled Vocabolario delle parole del dialetto napoletano,
che più siscostano dal dialetto toscano, con alcune ricerche etimologiche sulle
medesime degli Accademici Filopatridi.
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'. Galiani, who during his ten years in France 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
figure in the principal salons of Paris, and was in close contact with the most
influential figures 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.