Quattro testimoni della redazione VL del 'Milione' di Marco Polo. Analisi ecdotica ed edizione.

In his reconstruction of the tradition of Marco Polo’s “Milione”, L. F. Benedetto describes a subgroup of witnesses belonging to the Venetian family VA consisting of some fifteenth-century manuscripts and a set of prints of the XV - XVII (L.F. BENEDETTO Marco Polo, Il Milione. Prima edizione integrale, Firenze, 1928, p. CXX - CXXVI). In addition to the witnesses listed by Benedetto, other literary critics has identified more witnesses attributed to the group in question: in particular ms. 488 (ant. E.I.10) belonging to Teresian Library of Mantua (See BERTOLUCCI PIZZORUSSO, Recuperi (e smarrimenti) di manoscritti veneti del Milione, in Scritti in onore di G. B. Pellegrini, Pisa, Pacini, 1983, pp. 357-70) and, most recently, ms. Palatino 318 of the Palatina Library in Parma (C.W. Dutschke, Francesco Pipino and the manuscripts of Marco Polo's 'Travels', UMI Ann Arbor 1993) Therefore, at the current state of research, the group in question appears to be composed by five manuscripts and one early-printed edition (in my PhD Thesis Ch. II Part One): 1. Lu: ms. 1296 della Biblioteca Comunale di Lucca; 2. Se: ms. “Seminario11” della Institución Colombina di Siviglia 3. Mt: ms. 488 (già E.I.10) della Biblioteca Comunale di Mantova 4. Ma: ms. It.VI.208 (5881) della Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana. 5. Ss: L’incunabolo: Marco Polo da Veniesia dele meravigliose cose del mondo, impresso in Venetia per Zoanne Baptista da Sessa milanese del Mccccxcvi. 6. Pa: ms. Palatino 318 della Biblioteca Palatina di Parma. The group was studied by Angelica Valentinetti Mendi, who provided in her PhD thesis an edition of Lu and Se, proposing the relationship between them, and published the text of Ma and Ss as ‘ appendix’. (ANGÉLICA VALENTINETTI MENDI, Una familia veneta del libro de Marco Polo, Madrid, Universidad Complutense, 1992). Starting point of my PhD Thesis are these bibliography considerations (Ch. I Part One). My work consists in a systematic collation of the six witnesses, confronting them with the mains versions of Marco Polo’s masterpiece (in particular ms. F and ms. VA3). These results are summarized in Chapter III of Part One. It has been possible to establish the relationship between these codes and to draw a more precise stemma codicum than that proposed by the critical literature before me. (Cfr. in part. VALENTINETTI MENDI, op. cit., p. 70; M. POLO, Il «Milione» veneto: ms. CM 211 della Biblioteca civica di Padova, a cura di A. BARBIERI E A. ANDREOSE, con la collaborazione di M. MAURO, premessa di L. RENZI, Venezia, Marsilio, 1999, p. 42). Furthermore, in the II Part of my work, I offer the interpretive edition of Ma and Pa, still unpublished, and a new edition of Ss and Mt.