Lettera in Proverbi by Antonio Vignali: Paremiological Study

Abstract

In the volume entitled Las cartas en refranes en España en el siglo XVI: Blasco de Garay (Sardelli, in press) we approach the study of letters in sayings in the Spanish literary tradition of the 16th century, with special attention to the work of Blasco de Garay, the maximum representative of this genre that combines the epistolary model and the use-abuse of sayings. In the same tradition, some Italian works of the 16th century seem to have been conceived with the same intention of playing with the proverb, so that the paremiological element becomes the very skeleton of an epistle which, deprived of this sententious charge, also loses all possible meaning.

In this work, we will devote ourselves to the paremiological analysis of an exemplary letter of this peculiar genre, the Lettera in proverbi by Antonio Vignali, which contains more than 300 sententious statements and phraseological units. After classifying the paremias found, we will analyse the methodology of their insertion in the text and their function in the economy of the letter.