Printed Riddles in Early Modern Italy: Traditional Perspectives and New Approaches

From Firenze University Press Journal: Journal of Early Modern Studies (JEMS)

Marco Francalanci, Universidad de Alcalá

Se pareba boves alba pratalia araba & albo versorio teneba & negro semen seminaba: one of the earliest known vernacular texts is a riddle.

This is, of course, the famous Indovinello veronese (Veronese Riddle), a postilla found in a manuscript written in Spain during the eighth century and now preserved at the Biblioteca Capitolare in Verona. The story of the discovery and dating of the postilla is well known and can be found in any Italian literature textbook. We will briefly go over some of the details.The credit for the discovery of the Indovinello, which was not immediately recognised as a riddle, belongs to Luigi Schiaparelli. In 1924 he produced a commentary for the Orazionale mozarabico of the Biblioteca Capitolare, the codex in which the postilla is contained, from a purely palaeographic and codicological point of view. Schiaparelli also expressed himself on the provenance of the postilla, claiming that it would have been added to the Orazionaleby an unknown hand in the city of Verona at the end of the eighth century (Schiaparelli 1924). Shortly after the publication of the aforementioned article, Nino Tamassia opened the real debate on the postilla in a piece written together with Michele Scherillo (1924), entirely transcribing and identifying it as a semi-vernacular text, an excerpt of a larger composition. Between 1924 and 1926, many scholars returned to the subject, reflecting on the linguistic identity and meaning of the postilla, but systematically failing to identify it as the mere riddle it actually was. The famous philologist Vincenzo De Bartholomaeis, who had spoken of the postilla — defining it as a ritmo (rhythm) — in a collection he edited in 1926, had moved along the same lines. It was during one of his lectures at the University of Bologna that the issue was put into a whole new light: Lina Calza, a first-year university student, pointed out the similarity of the text to some verses she had heard sung by common people and which alluded to the act of writing. She then advanced the idea that it might be an ancient variant of the same riddle, which was still performed in the rural area of the Apennines during the early twentieth century. The association was immediately accepted by De Bartholomaeis, who quickly found traces of other variants in the writings of historians of folklore and popular culture. Thus, the true nature of the postilla was identified and the debate on the Indovinello veronese, still considerable, finally found a clear direction after the publication of the discovery (De Bartholomaeis 1927). There is, however, an unknown story that runs alongside the one just reported and that interests us closely. In fact, before De Bartholomaeis, and following a completely different path, a sixteenth-century version of the riddle and its solution were published in the journal La Bibliofilía (1924, vol. 26, 179–188). The solution itself was not acknowledged by the author of the contribution and went completely unnoticed, arousing no interest among scholars who dealt with the postilla.The key to solving the problem was contained in an article on sixteenth-century popular culture by the philologist Guido Vitaletti. In this essay (1924), Vitaletti transcribed part of the Indovinello nuovo. The article contained a collection of riddles in a question-and-answer form and mottos printed in Milan for Pandolfo Malatesta at the end of the sixteenth century (Indovinello nuovo [c. 1594]). This work contains a brief riddle that reads: ‘Campo bianco, semenza negra, doi la guarda e cinque la mena’. Next to it is the solution, which is also given in Vitaletti’s transcription: ‘La penna da scrivere’ (Vitaletti 1924, 183). It is clearly a variant of the most famous riddle in the history of the Italian language, which circulated at the height of the sixteenth century in several other collections and was well known during the modern age.This story is significant. It not only allows us to reflect upon a curious coincidence, but also demonstrates the existence of a bias that has affected the study of riddles for a long time and continues to this day. Indeed, literary scholars have traditionally dismissed these literary forms, considering them merely minor productions. The case of the Indovinello veronese has certainly demonstrated the opposite.It is therefore necessary to look at the studies produced on this literature as well as the paths outlined by historiography within the study of popular literature.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.36253/jems-2279-7149-15203

Read Full Text: https://oajournals.fupress.net/index.php/bsfm-jems/article/view/15203