‘By consultation of elevated minds’: the role of paratexts in Giovanni Battista Calderari's comedies

Abstract

Genette's Seuils considers the dramatic paratext as the odd one out, and, indeed, the early‐modern theatrical paratext has remained understudied. This article discusses the paratexts of the comedies of Giovanni Battista Calderari, a sixteenth‐century author quite neglected by scholars, whose works were published in Vicenza and Venice. By focusing on the paratexts of La Mora (The Moorish Woman, 1588), La schiava (The Slave Woman, 1589), and Armida (1600), the article stresses Calderari's attempts to clarify his poetic ideas and his endeavours to create a network of intellectuals and obtain their opinions about his work. These interlocutors belonged to the knights of Malta and the Vicenzan Accademia Olimpica, two circles to which Calderari himself belonged, but they also were authoritative Venetian intellectuals. His insertion of poems and letters that praise his person and work, reveals his attempt to promote himself and his writings. He tries to promote himself not only as a military man or a great Vicenzan poet, but as a scholar of theatre who is able to juggle poetic discourse and is worthy to be considered by intellectuals, though he ultimately seems to have failed to really assert himself on the Venetian cultural scene and the Vicenzan stage.