Contributo all’edizione critica e all’esegesi storica degli scritti di teoria teatrale di Carlo Gozzi

Abstract

In the last decade there has been a proper “Gozzi Renaissance”. This study aims at giving a contribution to such “Renaissance” with a twofold purpose: to investigate an aspect of the author’s complex personality which the critics have ignored (or scornfully disdained) so far, and to offer a methodological contribution to the use of the imposing quantity of autograph writings which have been discovered recently and can be looked up in at the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana in Venice. After a preliminary definition of the texts which can be considered strictly theoretical, the investigation focuses on the introductory chapters on Carlo Gozzi’s reflexion on theatre, that is to say the preface to the translation of Baculard D’Arnaud’s Fajel and the promotional manifesto of the Colombani edition. The choice of the texts, illuminating preambles to Ragionamento ingenuo, has been greatly influenced by the consideration of their eclipse from the text tradition and the strong belief that they reveal, like a brightly clear miniature, the animus of Gozzi’s theoretical thought. The rigorous scrutiny of the manuscripts (which has very often been entrusted to confused fragments) and of the printed witnesses has allowed to identify the genetic process of the texts and to know the “behind the scenes” of Gozzi’s theoretical elaboration and stylistic lay out. Therefore the texts have been edited with grounded critical criteria and richly annotated with a linguistic-stylistic and historical-critical commentary. The final chapter is aimed at highlighting the fundamental ideas of the author’s theoretical thought and their unexpected modernity.