MALESPINI, CELIO. - Man of letters, b. in Venice in 1531, d. there ca. 1610. A descendant, if he did not falsify this too, of the Malespini of Lunigiana. A notorious adventurer, he tried his fortune in various ways and places, also as a soldier of fortune; then, to use a verb dear to him, he "climbed over" in Venice and laid his hand on the press, which at that time flattered his peers, as seventy years earlier it had beguiled the learned.
Aided by a singular instinct for forgery, he brought out books of every color, but without the imagination, sometimes ingenious and even honest, of a Dolei, a Doni, a Ruscelli or a Sansovino. And yet his dishonesty was also beneficial to poetry, when from the madhouse of Ferrara there came into his hands certain octaves that were the first cantos of the Gerusalemme Liberata. He published them disgracefully under the title Goffredo (Venice 1579). But from this came the almost complete edition of Ingegneri and a more honest edition of his own. He also wrote two hundred Novelle (ibid. 1609), most of them, naturally, stolen, but all useful for the knowledge of manners, and all stamped with his "candid" cynicism.
Bibliography2 worksEditions: Novelle scelte, with preface and edited by E. Alodoli, Lanciano 1915. Studies: G. E. Saltini, Di C. M., ultimo novelliere italiano
BIBL.: Editions: Novelle scelte, with preface and edited by E. Alodoli, Lanciano 1915. Studies: G. E. Saltini, Di C. M., ultimo novelliere italiano in prosa del sec. XVI, in Atti della Società Colombaria di Firenze, 5 (1907), pp. 181-226; L. di Francia, Novellistica, II, Milan n.d., pp. 154-68.
Toffanin, Giuseppe. “Malespini, celio.” In Enciclopedia Cattolica, vol. VII, col. 1912. Città del Vaticano: Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico, 1951. https://azioneromana.com/article/malespini-celio.
MLA
Toffanin, Giuseppe. “Malespini, celio.” Enciclopedia Cattolica, vol. VII, Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico, 1951, col. 1912. Azione Romana, https://azioneromana.com/article/malespini-celio.
BibTeX
@incollection{ec7_malespini_celio,
author = {Toffanin, Giuseppe},
title = {Malespini, celio},
booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica},
volume = {VII},
pages = {1912},
note = {Cited by column},
publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico},
address = {Città del Vaticano},
year = {1951},
url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/malespini-celio}
}
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