Circolazione e ricezione italiana del ‘De remediis utriusque fortune’ 1366–1607

This doctoral dissertation offers a comprehensive study of the Italian circulation and reception of De remediis utriusque fortune by Francesco Petrarch, from the completion of the work in 1366 to its definitive incorporation into the learned culture of the Baroque age in the early seventeenth century. Adopting a methodological framework that combines book history, philology, and cultural history, the research examines in parallel the manuscript tradition, typographical dissemination, and the multiple forms of textual reuse. The investigation is grounded in a carefully delimited corpus of Italian manuscripts, supplemented by the analysis of private and institutional library inventories, as well as by the study of quotations, abridgments, and adaptations of the De remediis. Particular attention is devoted to the transformative moments that shaped the history of the text’s transmission: the transition from manuscript to print; the proliferation of portable editions in the early sixteenth century; and the predominance of the vernacular translation over the Latin original in Italy during the second half of the sixteenth century. The study highlights the capacity of the De remediis to adapt to changing cultural and medial contexts while preserving its function as an ethical repertory and a formative instrument of self-fashioning. By retracing this longue durée of reception, the dissertation demonstrates how the De remediis constitutes a privileged laboratory for observing the construction of moral and cultural modernity at the intersection of humanist heritage, reading practices, and book technologies.