Two or Three Things I Know about Him (On the Plays of the Fumoso, «pellegrino Ingegno de la Congrega de’ Rozzi»)

Abstract

The present study offers a synthetic overview of some of the key insights that emerged from the first critical commented edition of the plays of the 16th-century Rozzi 119 Congregation (Congrega dei Rozzi). The edition focused on the corpus of the Congregation’s chief exponent, Salvestro, the paper-manufacturer, called Il Fumoso. That work not only provided fundamental methodological indications regarding the philological analysis of dramatic works, but also suggested the possibility of becoming acquainted with a dramatic art quite different from the kind of “theatre we have in mind”. The approach involved suspending any hermeneutic pre-judgement, by relying on a painstaking consideration of those witnesses that – albeit reticent – have handed down to us the otherness and richness of that culture.