Historical Reasons for Renaissance Author Philology. With preliminary remarks on “Come lavorava l'Ariosto”

Abstract

Reconsidering the tradition of so-called auteur philology, the essay insists on the one hand on its definition all the way upstream of Contini’s variant criticism, and on the other on the not strictly linguistic-stylistic interest from which some major undertakings in this field originated. After a quick overview of significant editions of Renaissance texts and cases of various interest, Gianfranco Contini’s essay Come lavorava l’Ariosto is examined, particularly the variants analysed there and their categorisation, here verified in the context of the work and assessed in a different way.