La Veniexiana (play)

La veniexiana ("The Venetian Woman") is a comedy play in five acts from around 1536, written in the Venetian language by an unknown author.[1][2][3][4] It is titled The Venetian Comedy in English;[5][6]: p.1057  and the Venetian title is often written with modernized spelling La venexiana.

The play tells the story of Julio, a young man who arrives in Venice and falls in love with a young married woman.[4]

The anonymous play was discovered by E. Lovarini in a Venetian book at the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana in Venice, and published by him in 1928.[7][4] It is believed to have been composed between 1535 and 1537.[8] It has been attributed to the learned and lettered Girolamo Fracastoro of Verona (1478–1553), but this attribution is far from proved.[4]

The comedy plays on the dialects of Tuscany, Venice and Bergamo. Julio, the educated foreigner, speaks Tuscan. The Venetian women (Anzòla and Valiera) and their maids speak Venetian, while the porter speaks Bergamasque.[8]

The play was adapted in 1958 by Ingmar Bergman as the Swedish television drama The Venetian (Venetianskan), and in 1986 by Mauro Bolognini as the erotic movie The Venetian Woman (La venexiana).

  1. ^ Carolyn Balducci and Martin W. Walsh (2000): La Veniexiana (1535) Volume 34 of Carleton Renaissance Plays in Translation Dovehouse Editions Canada; 83 pages. ISBN 9781895537574
  2. ^ G. Padoan, ed. (1994): La veniexiana. Testo originale a fronte. Marsilio; 160 pages. ISBN 9788831759038
  3. ^ Giorgio Padoa (1974): La Veniexiana. Volume 20 of Medioevo e Umanesimo. Antenore; 153 pages. ISSN 0543-3274
  4. ^ a b c d John Gassner, Edward Quinn The Reader's Encyclopedia of World Drama 2002 p.895 "B. W. Venexiana. La (The Venexiana. first half of sixteenth century). An anonymous Italian comedy."
  5. ^ DeBellis (1972)
  6. ^ Robin Healey (2011): Italian Literature Before 1900 in English Translation: An Annotated Bibliography, 1929-2008. University of Toronto Press; 1150 pages. ISBN 9781442642690
  7. ^ Paul Larivaille (2017): La Comédie vénitienne. Volume 39 of Bibliotheque Italienne. Les Belles lettres; 304 pages. ISBN 9782251730479
  8. ^ a b Hermann W. Haller The Other Italy: The Literary Canon in Dialect 1999 p.135 "The new vertical plurilingualism is fully at work in the anonymous five-act ... and genuine early theatrical jewel La venexiana ..."