Giuseppe Maria Galanti e gli inediti sull’Abruzzo. Lettere, catechismi e relazioni tra progetti di riforma e Illuminismo

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]