I manoscritti di Orazio De Attellis nella Biblioteca Nazionale di Napoli

Abstract

The aim of this research is to introduce the importance of Orazio De Attellis, a Molisan writer who lived between the eighteenth and the nineteenth century, by realising the critical edition of two of his works still unknown, that is to say the autobiography Vicende di un gentiluomo, written in 1845 in the United States, and I miei casi di Roma sotto il Triumvirato Mazzini, Armellini e Saffi, an autobiographical work, written in Rome in 1849. These two manuscripts, with other original manuscripts and documents concerning the author’s life, are stored at the National Library of Naples. These works are of a great historical value because the author’s biography is closely connected with the Italian political history of the years he lived. During his whole life, Orazio De Attellis tried to achieve the ideals of freedom and Italian national unity, both through direct participation to the events of the Italian Risorgimento and through his publications. Despite the historical importance of De Attellis’ works, there are very few studies on this subject, among them, those of Maria Bizzarrilli and Nino Cortese, dating from the 1930s, and the most recent study of Luciano Rusich, which dates back to the beginning of the 1980s. These researchers used the manuscripts of De Attellis to reconstruct his biography, but none of them dealt with the critical edition of these texts. There is therefore a real interest in their publication. As I realized most of the work about the critical edition of the autobiography Vicende di un gentiluomo in 2016, during my Master thesis, I started my doctoral course with the transcription of the manuscript I miei casi di Roma. The three parts which compose the manuscript, that is to say the Sinopsi biografica (a chronology of De Attellis’ life), the journal containing the events of 1849 and the letters placed at the end of the work, have been completely transcribed and accompanied by a critical apparatus. De Attellis wrote I miei casi di Roma to denounce the treatment of the Roman Triumvirate, especially of Giuseppe Mazzini, who did not accept his collaboration in the defense of the Roman Republic. Thus, this work is essentially an apology for his political military actions in the context of the Tuscan and Roman republics of 1849. ... [edited by Author]