| dc.description.abstract | The object of the doctoral thesis, archival and philological topic, conduces to a double level of
exegesis, treating on transcription and analysis of handwritten papers Corpus on Abruzzo of
Giuseppe Maria Galanti’s, one of the greatest exponents of the Neapolitan Enlightenment, lived
between 1743 and 1806, in an historical period of great political changes.
Galanti is also known to have been a student of the economist Antonio Genovesi which
continued and innovated the reform program, holding important positions within the administrative
structure of the Naples Kingdom, which enabled him to analyze the conditions and the role of the
provinces, engaging his life with great uprightness in a route of deep knowledge of reality and the
design of reforms that led the South moving away from the state of backwardness and heading
towards modernization.
The work is centered on the documents of Faldone or Cartella Abruzzo, organized in 15
dossiers, moving from private Archive of the Author's home in Santa Croce del Sannio (today
Benevento, before Molise) and actually in the Fondo Galanti of Historical Archive of Campobasso
with provisional numbering 13. It’s a patchwork of heterogeneous documents consisting mainly of:
autograph and anonymous letters, memories, notes, news, travel journals, selve, catechismi and
relations that contribute to the historical-philological reconstruction of a segment of the work of
Galanti, who was an economist, historian, philosopher, memoirist, politician, writer, traveler, as
well as cultural operator, publisher and founder of the Società Letteraria and Tipografica, attentive
to the cultural developments not only Italian, but also European, so as to promote circulation in the
Kingdom of the Enlightenment’s ideas and principles through translations and editions.
The time span of the research is to revolve primarily around the 90s of the eighteenth century,
ranging within a dense network of various papers, conveying handwritings and different content and
sometimes titles, dating and doubtful assignments, which have been reconstructed thanks to close
connection between the sources and autograph and not autograph documents and among the works
published ante and post mortem of the Author.
The Fondo Galanti consists of 21 folders for a total of 8000 papers regarding the time span of
40 years of the Author's life, starting from the famous Lettera filosofica of 1761 up to the Ultime
memorie of 1799-1806. Specifically the documents of Cartella Abruzzo, whose contents belong on
the natural state, political, social, economic, fiscal, demographic and lifestyle of the three provinces
of Abruzzo: Teramo, Chieti and L'Aquila, in addition to containing Bozza di una relazione per la
Marca di Ancona, were appropriately microfilmed under a previous editorial project of critical
edition of the while Corpus of Galanti’s works, supported in the first phase from professors
Gabriele De Rosa and Augusto Placanica, and then from professors Pasquale Alberto De Lisio,
Sebastiano Martelli and Francesco Barra.
It was later made an analytical register of the papers by explanatory summaries of the main
content, feature naming and numbering indication of the manuscripts; the selection of materials to
be transcribed and analyzed was then evaluated as a result of a “collation” between published and
unpublished documents.
It was decided as well to transcribe unknowns manuscripts by the scholars and displaying
them in a rich Appendix accompanied by a Note to the text in which the conservative and linguistic
choices were indicated.
After a detailed study of primary and secondary literature sources, it’s preferred not to focus
the work on the documents relating to Teramo, already abundantly treated in the works of the
historian Vincenzo Clemente, but rather on those that describe the natural, economic and social
state of Chieti and L'Aquila, through letters, "catechismi” and relations, with the aim of integrating
the critical work already done by other scholars of the Abruzzo region and providing new insights
and critical historiographical survey of the South.
The documents also analyzed for thematic and chronological units, turn out also of
particular interest to understand the way in which, in the late eighteenth century, the reformism of
Genovesi had penetrated the provinces of Naples, enabling them, thanks to the work of a group of
great reformers, to keep alive a heated dialectic between peripherals reality and the central
government, concerning public economics topics, through the activities of the Società Patriottiche
established in Teramo in 1789.
Sources have also revealed important to witness the systematic rewriting of the Author, the
rearrangement in which his works were continually subjected and the intense activity of its
correspondents: inspectors of the Department, administrators, citizens elected, tax lawyers, judges
of Hearing, medium and large owners exponents of the radical progressive bourgeoisie and
reforming how Delphic brothers, but also as Giacinto Dragonetti, Antonio Nolli, Vincenzo
Minicucci, Giacinto Cipriani, etc.
This suggests an analytical framework of extreme historical and economic interest, very useful for
the purposes of historical debate and rather enlightening to enrich the already dense workshop
historical studies on Galanti, known as the father of statistics, thanks to the variety of topics ranging
from the quantitative data
for statistical surveys (list of the number of marriages, murders, prisons), demographic trends and
the state of tax collection in the provinces. It was also detected the element of "normalization" of
eighteenth-century language and the process of "risemantizzazione" operated by economists on the
Italian language it is to receive loanwords from foreign languages, latinisms, as well as typical
entries of the bureaucratic language. It’s very interesting the specific writing forms of Galanti
ranging from the use of selve, interpolations and notes to the manuscripts, of travel reports,
objective and structured in a nominal and paratactic style and use of catechismi, questionnaires and
forms sent to the local authorities, senior officials and priests of the territories visited. What we
wanted to show in the thesis is how relevant was the work of Galanti, who in a time of strong
political and social contrasts, where the provinces of Naples Kingdom, oppressed by feudal
privileges, had rejected the rigid patterns of the tradition in the name of freedom of thought, of
progress and "civilization", not hesitating to show a total membership to the calls of modern
European culture and enlightenment, as well as the agronomic model of Marca anconetana face to
conquer a new horizon of economic development, thanks to the rotation of crops, livestock and
permanent upgrading of road infrastructure.
The intellectual from Molise survey assumes an even more value by using an empirical and
interdisciplinary approach in which come together: physical geography, historical and economic
geography, demography, sociology, allowing it to mend the most significant part of an history of
the South really oriented on the "interests of men." [edited by author] | it_IT |
