venetian literature and publishing 645
enciclopedico [Encyclopedic Newspaper]. both women were also prolific
translators of european literary and theatrical works.47
Parallel to goldoni’s career ran that of giacomo Casanova, who even
played in the orchestra at the staging of one of goldoni’s plays. his mother
and her husband (possibly not Casanova’s father) both actors, Casanova
lived and wrote his life almost as a string of theatrical episodes,48 like an
actor creating a persona out of the affirmation of others and giving full
voice to the strain of Venetian libertinism initiated by Pietro aretino and
developed by gian Francesco Loredan and his clients.
the republic itself was snuffed out in 1797 by napoleon, shortly after a
delegation sent by the fledgling united states with the goal of developing
a trade agreement had concluded that there was insufficient reason.49
the success of Venetian literature and publishing is connected with an
enduring eclecticism that developed in a port city poised between east
and West, whose markets it grew wealthy satisfying, and was deepened in
the republic’s international university in Padua. this aesthetic advantage
was augmented by the prudence of the Venetian government in allowing a
broad range of views to be published and in providing financial protection
to publishers through the privilegio. as a result, works written and printed
in Venice provided something for every taste: realistic and fantastic, patri-
cian and popular, local and exotic, serious and comic, religious and erotic,
virtuous and vice-laden, passionate and chaste, idealizing and pragmatic,
conservative and innovative, patriarchal and feminist, rebellious and tra-
ditional, outrageous and uplifting, egalitarian and hierarchical. such a
broad range provided the additional advantage of permitting immediate
adaptation to changing trends. Venetian literature and publishing thus for
centuries enjoyed unusual success by initiating or assuming leadership in
many aesthetic and intellectual trends and at times even in socio-political
ones. the resulting body of work made a crucial contribution to Western
thought and culture.
47 turchi, “il teatro del secondo settecento,” pp. 648–49; santato, “Cultura e letteratura
dell’illuminismo,” p. 409.
48 Pullini, “il teatro fra polemica e costume,” p. 280.
49 Piero del negro and Federica ambrosini, L’Aquila e il Leone: i contatti diplomatici
per un accordo commerciale fra gli Stati Uniti d’America e la Repubblica di Venezia (Padua,
1989).