venetian literature and publishing 635
as ginetta auzzas has noted, the romance is associated with the court,
which Venice lacked. the patrician gian Francesco Loredan, however,
filled the gap by founding the accademia degli incogniti [academy of the
anonymous; founded 1630], which he hosted in his home and opened to
a wide variety of members. in auzzas’s view, Venice’s cultural and intel-
lectual impoverishment had left entertainment literature as one of the
few instruments by which to gain power, a situation that was exploited
by Loredan. For auzzas, he was a “cynical and shameless egotist” in search
solely of “wealth and worldly success” who indulged the contemporary
taste for the marvelous and even sensational in order to achieve the pin-
nacle of social power, instead of building a new culture based on the
expanding of intellectual horizons by figures such as galileo and sarpi.24
From a slightly different perspective, with the losses first inflicted in the
early 16th century becoming permanent, patricians now appropriated the
freedom to voice extreme opinions that they had earlier accorded invited
outsiders such as ruzante. the difference was that ruzante was proposing
a program for a new society that would recognize the dignity and self-
determination of all, whereas patricians such as Loredan aimed to rein-
force the privileged status of the patriciate.
Loredan began his ascent with his Scherzi geniali [Clever Jokes, 1632],
which outsold even the works of the most popular writer of the day,
his cultural model the neapolitan poet giambattista Marino. Loredan’s
romance Dianea (1635), in the “heroic galant” strain, allowed Venetian
patricians the illusion that they still occupied an important place in the
world. For about the next quarter century, writers resident in Venice and
its mainland cities, many of them associated with the incogniti, produced
numerous romances published in Venice. Perhaps most notorious among
them was the libertine Ferrante Pallavicino, who became Loredan’s sec-
retary. romances written outside the republic and translations of various
european romances were also published there, such that approximately
half of the italian production occurred in Venice. Venetian romances also
began to be translated into major european languages.25
as the “heroic galant” style and its influence on real life came to be
criticized as corrupting, Loredan developed new, moralizing romances
based on lives of saints and heroic deeds of Venetians.26 his scriptural
24 ginetta auzzas, “Le nuove esperienze nella narrativa: il romanzo,” in SCV 4.1 (1983):
Dalla Controriforma alla fine della Repubblica. Il Seicento, pp. 259.
25 albertazzi, Romanzi e romanzieri, 159–64, 187–220, 236–37; auzzas, “nuove.”
26 albertazzi, Romanzi e romanzieri, pp. 171–82.