In fact, sometimes a single text can solve a whole series of problems. As I continue checking the author catalog, I decide (since it is there, and since it appears to be a fundamental reference work) to take a look at Giovanni Getto’s “La polemica sul barocco” (The polemic on the baroque), in the first volume of the 1956 miscellaneous work Letteratura italiana. Le correnti (The currents of Italian literature). I quickly notice that the study is almost a hundred pages long and exceptionally important, because it narrates the entire controversy on baroque style. I notice the names of major Italian writers and intellectuals who have been discussing the baroque from the seventeenth to the twentieth century: Giovanni Vincenzo Gravina, Ludovico Antonio Muratori, Girolamo Tiraboschi, Saverio Bettinelli, Giuseppe Baretti, Vittorio Alfieri, Melchiorre Cesarotti, Cesare Cantù, Vincenzo Gioberti, Francesco De Sanctis, Alessandro Manzoni, Giuseppe Mazzini, Giacomo Leopardi, Giosuè Carducci, up to the twentieth-century writer Curzio Malaparte and the other authors that I have already noted. And Getto quotes long excerpts from many of these authors, which clarifies an issue for me: if I am to write a thesis on the historical controversy on the baroque, it should be of high scientific originality, it will require many years of work, and its purpose must be precisely to prove that Getto’s inquiry has been insufficient, or was carried out from a faulty perspective. For a thesis of this kind, I must explore all of these authors. However, works of this kind generally require more experience than that of our hypothetical student in this experiment. If instead I work on the baroque texts, or the contemporary interpretations of these texts, I will not be expected to complete such an immense project (a project that Getto has already done, and done excellently).
Now, Getto’s work provides me with sufficient documentation for the background of my thesis, if not on its specific topic. Extensive works such as Getto’s must generate a series of separate index cards. In other words, I will write an index card on Muratori, one on Cesarotti, one on Leopardi, and so on. I will record the work in which they expressed their opinions on the baroque, and I will copy Getto’s summary onto each index card, with relevant quotes. (Naturally, I will also note that I took the material from Getto’s essay.) If I eventually choose to use this material in my thesis, I must honestly and prudently indicate in a footnote “as quoted in Getto” because I will be using secondhand information. In fact, since we are modeling research done with few means and little time, I will not have time to check the quote against its original source. Therefore, I will not be responsible for the quote’s possible imperfections. I will faithfully declare that I took it from another scholar, I will not pretend that I have seen the original information, and I will not have to worry. However, ideally the student would have the means to check each quote with the original text.
Having altered my course, the only authors I must not ignore at this point are the baroque authors on whom I will write my thesis. I must now search for these baroque authors because, as we have said in section 3.1.2, a thesis must also have primary sources. I cannot write about the treatise writers if I do not read them in their original form. I can trust the critical studies on the mannerist theorists of the figurative arts because they do not constitute the focus of my research, but I cannot ignore a central figure of baroque poetics such as Tesauro.
So let us now turn to the baroque treatise writers. First of all, there is Ezio Raimondi’s anthology Trattatisti e narratori del Seicento (Seventeenthcentury treatise and narrative prose writers) published by Ricciardi that contains 100 pages of Tesauro’s Cannocchiale aristotelico, 60 pages of Peregrini, and 60 of Sforza Pallavicino.
If I were writing a 30-page term paper instead of a thesis, this anthology would be more than sufficient. But for my thesis, I also want the entire treatises. Among them I need at least: Emanuele Tesauro, Il cannocchiale aristotelico; Matteo Peregrini, Delle acutezze (On acuities) and I fonti dell’ingegno ridotti a arte (The art of wit and its sources); Cardinal Sforza Pallavicino, Del bene (On the good) and Trattato dello stile e del dialogo (Treatise on style and dialogue). I begin to search for these in the “special collection” section of the author catalog, and I find two editions of the Cannocchiale, one from 1670 and the other from 1685. It is a real pity that the first 1654 edition is absent, all the more since I learned that content has been added to the various editions. I do find two nineteenth-century editions of Sforza Pallavicino’s complete works, but I do not find Peregrini. (This is unfortunate, but I am consoled by the 60 pages of his work anthologized by Raimondi.)
Incidentally, in some of the critical texts I previously consulted, I found scattered traces of Agostino Mascardi’s 1636 treatise De l’arte istorica (On the art of history), a work that makes many observations on the art of writing but is not included in these texts among the items of baroque treatise writing. Here in Alessandria there are five editions, three from the seventeenth and two from the nineteenth century. Should I write a thesis on Mascardi? If I think about it, this is not such a strange question. If a student cannot travel far from his home, he must work with the material that is locally available. Once, a philosophy professor told me that he had written a book on a specific German philosopher only because his institute had acquired the entire new edition of the philosopher’s complete works. Otherwise he would have studied a different author. Certainly not a passionate scholarly endeavor, but it happens.
Now, let us rest on our oars. What have I done here in Alessandria? I put together a critical bibliography that, to be conservative, includes at least 300 titles, if I record all the references I found. In the end, in Alessandria I found more than 30 of these 300 titles, in addition to original texts of at least two of the authors I could study, Tesauro and Sforza Pallavicino. This is not bad for a small city. But is it enough for my thesis?
Let us answer this question candidly. If I were to write a thesis in three months and rely mostly on indirect sources, these 30 titles would be enough. The books I have not found are probably quoted in those I have found, so if I assembled my survey effectively, I could build a solid argument. The trouble would be the bibliography; if I include only the texts that I actually read in their original form, my advisor could accuse me of neglecting a fundamental text. And what if I cheat? We have already seen how this process is both unethical and imprudent.
I do know one thing for certain: for the first three months I can easily work locally, between sessions in the library and at home with books that I’ve borrowed. I must remember that reference books and very old books do not circulate, nor do volumes of periodicals (but for these, I can work with photocopies). But I can borrow most other kinds of books. In the following months, I could travel to the city of my university for some intensive sessions, and I could easily work locally from September to December. Also, in Alessandria I could find editions of all the texts by Tesauro and Sforza Pallavicino. Better still, I should ask myself if it would not be better to gamble everything on only one of these two authors, by working directly with the original text and using the bibliographical material I found for background information. Afterward, I will have to determine what other books I need, and travel to Turin or Genoa to find them. With a little luck I will eventually find everything I need. And thanks to the fact that I’ve chosen an Italian topic, I have avoided the need to travel, say, to Paris or Oxford.
Nevertheless, these are difficult decisions to make. Once I have created the bibliography, it would be wise to return to the (hypothetical) advisor and show him what I have. He will be able to suggest appropriate solutions to help me narrow the scope, and tell me which books are absolutely necessary. If I am unable to find some of these in Alessandria, I can ask the librarian if the Alessandria library can borrow them from other libraries. I can also travel to the university library, where I might identify a series of books and articles. I would lack the time to
