"The most famous jokebook of the Renaissance"
Poggii Florentini Facetiarum libellus unicus notulis imitatores indicantibus & nonnullis sive latinis, sive gallicis imitationibus illustratus, simul ad fidem optimarum editionum emendatus.
Londini [i.e. Utrecht]: [B. Wild and I. Altheer], 1798.
XXII, 283; XII, 300 pp. 2 vols. 16mo. "The most famous jokebook of the Renaissance" 19th century 3/4 morocco over marbled boards, marbled endpapers. Minror rubbing to binding ESTC T117196 & T126570. Item #310654
"The Facetiae of the well-known humanist Poggio Bracciolini ... is the most famous jokebook of the Renaissance and the only one internationally known and read today. Poggio compield it while he was a Papal secretary working in the Curia, and intended it both as relaxation for hard-working intellectuals, and as proof that trivial stories could be written in good Latin. The collection is a mixture of fully developed comic anecdotes ... and short witty repartees.... It also includes a few accounts of monsters and portents, not at all comic, which nevertheless can be called facetiae. Unlike most other joke collectors, Poggio tells no classical anecdotes, and most of his satire is directed against the three traditional butts of the medieval exemplum: the corruption of churcmen, the stupidity of peasants, and the sexual insatiability of women" (Bowen, ed.; One Hundred Renaissance Jokes: An Anthology, p 5).
Volume I is a reissue of the Utrecht edition of 1797 with a cancel title matching the false imprint on the title in volume II. The edition was edited by François Joseph Michel Noël.
Price: $275.00 Free Domestic Delivery
