“Faithful to the Spoken Word. Sermons from Orality to Writing in Early Modern Italy”, in “Oral Culture in Early Modern Italy: Street Performance, Language, Religion”, special issue of The Italianist, 34 (2014): 463-477. (original) (raw)

Abstract

Many Italian early modern sermons have come down to us in the form of handwritten transcriptions or printed books. Many preachers, reportatores, or editors of sermons stress that their written texts correspond verbatim to their oral versions pronounced from the pulpit. Usually there are no specific reasons to doubt the fidelity of those texts to their originals, but this raises a more general question: to what extent can we rely on a reportatio written during the sermon or on a printed version, often revised and amended even by the preacher himself? The paper examines the passage from the spoken word of a preacher to its written version and raises some doubts on the alleged fidelity of the latter. In addition, it tries to explain why the perfect correspondence between the two versions was so frequently claimed even if it did not exist.

Stefano Dall'Aglio hasn't uploaded this document.

Let Stefano know you want this document to be uploaded.

Ask for this document to be uploaded.