Pallavicino - Il Sansone - 1652

Rare pocket-format edition of this important historical-religious novel in three books written by the famous libertine author Ferrante Pallavicino (1615-1644), first published in Venice in 1638.

The work is considered one of the key texts of Italian Seicento novel production. It fully embodies the provocative and unconformist style of the libertine current linked to the Academy of the Incogniti, of which Pallavicino was one of the most brilliant and controversial members.

Pallavicino takes as the basis the famous Old Testament story of Samson and Delilah from the Book of Judges, but the text enriches the sacred narration with explicit erotic undertones. The book achieved immediate and extraordinary popular success but was harshly contested by the Roman Curia and inserted into the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, remaining in the sights of ecclesiastical censorship for centuries.

Ferrante Pallavicino, Il Sansone. Libri tre, Venice, Giacomo Bortoli, 1652.

PP.: 263 [i.e. 261], (III). COMPLETE.

Copy with sheets in overall good condition, but with widespread humidity stains. Gap at the lower part of the last blank sheet. Usual signs of use and time.

Contemporary full leather binding with title and ornaments in gold on the spine, well preserved. Missing the white front flyleaf.