Saccenti - Rime Piacevoli - 1761

THE MOST IRREVERENT VOICE OF the Italian XVIIIth Century: The Satirical Verses of Saccenti, Published Posthumously
First part of the posthumous collection of the poems by Giovan Santi Saccenti da Cerreto, Tuscan poet known for a satirical, burlesque vein and openly anticortigian. The title page reads: Collection of the pleasant verses by Giovan Santi Saccenti da Cerreto, never before published. Volume One, Roveredo, 1761. The notice «The Publisher to the Reader» specifies that Saccenti did not wish to publish his own verses during his life and that the collection was assembled after his death. The volume preserves a lively repertoire of playful and satirical pieces devoted to daily life, to the clergy, to doctors, to lawyers, to bureaucracy, to money, to poverty and to social conventions. Behind the apparently light tone lies a sharp observation of eighteenth-century Italian society: Saccenti targets vanity, privileges, hypocrisies and small human miseries with a direct, colloquial language and often deliberately popular style. Particularly significant is the editorial statement that the author wrote «to please his friends» and to «furlate the vicious» (frustrate the vicious), a concise definition of his satirical poetics.

MARKET VALUE
Eighteenth-century edition of interest for Italian satirical and burlesque poetry, made more attractive by the posthumous publication and by the frontispiece indication «Never before published». The copy also features a pleasant full parchment binding and wide margins with rough edges. Antiquarian value of the specimen: €400–500. Interest increases for collectors of satirical literature, eighteenth-century playful poetry, and historical costume.

PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION AND CONDITION
Full parchment binding, original or slightly later, smooth back with leather inlay and gilt title. Untrimmed edges and preserved guard edges. Typographic frontispiece; woodcut crest at the beginning of the Verses; ornate initials. Paper with natural waviness and irregular margins, some physiological foxing, spots and light browning; some ancient annotations and manuscript signatures on the endpapers. Parchment with normal signs of time, light stains and abrasions; spine inlay partially missing. In old books with a multi-century history, there may be some imperfections not always noted in the description. Pp. (2); 8; 228; (2).

FULL TITLE AND AUTHOR
Collection of the pleasant verses.
In Roveredo, in the year 1761.
Giovan Santi Saccenti da Cerreto.

CONTEXT AND SIGNIFICANCE
Saccenti belongs to the long Italian tradition of playful and satirical poetry which, through Berni and the berneschi, transformed parody and comic reversal into instruments of social critique. In the Eighteenth Century this tradition takes on particular importance because it allows an inside view of a society dominated by rank conventions, bureaucracy, the clergy, professions and networks of patronage. The titles listed in the indexes already indicate the character of the work: priests and curates, doctors, lawyers, apothecaries, senators, chancellors and everyday-life figures appear, alternated with pieces on money, hunger, offices and social conventions. Saccenti’s poetry often avoids the lofty register to adopt a direct, ironic, and sometimes biting language. The importance of the collection lies precisely in this ability to transform seemingly minor episodes into a satirical fresco of eighteenth-century society. The editorial notice is also valuable for understanding the genesis of the texts: the poems circulated originally in a private and friendly environment and only after the author’s death were gathered for print.

BIOGRAPHY OF THE AUTHOR
Giovan Santi Saccenti, native of Cerreto Guidi in Tuscany, was an Italian poet active between the 17th and 18th centuries and distinguished mainly in the playful, satirical and Bernesque genre. His production began primarily as occasional poetry, destined to circulate among friends and acquaintances rather than for official publication. The edition’s publisher emphasizes that Saccenti had never pursued systematically collecting his verses and that many compositions risked being lost. His poetry targets concrete people and situations, often with corrosive humor but accompanied by acute social observation. Saccenti’s posthumous fortune derives mainly from the Rime piacevoli, which place him in the tradition of Italian comic-realistic and bernesque poetry.

PRINTING HISTORY AND CIRCULATION
The Collection of the pleasant verses was published posthumously in 1761 with the explicit indication «Never before published». This element is bibliographically significant: the edition was created with the stated aim of recovering texts that had until then remained manuscript or circulating privately. In the notice the editor recounts having gathered the poems «with great effort» in various places of Tuscany, because Saccenti had not personally prepared a corpus intended for printing. It is also recalled that the poet died in 1748. Printing in Roveredo falls within the eighteenth-century phenomenon of editions produced in peripheral typography centers or with editorial indications that allowed greater freedom in publishing satirical and potentially indiscreet texts. The present copy preserves Volume One, a circumstance to be distinguished from the complete collection in multiple parts.

BIBLIOGRAPHY AND REFERENCES
Raccolta delle rime piacevoli di Giovan Santi Saccenti da Cerreto. Non mai per avanti pubblicate. Tomo Primo, Roveredo, 1761.
Editorial notice «The Publisher to the Reader», preface to this edition, fundamental testimony on the posthumous formation of the collection and on the prior manuscript circulation of the poems.
Bibliographic indexes of eighteenth-century Italian poetry and of the Bernesque and playful tradition.
National Italian bibliographic catalogues, under Giovan Santi Saccenti / Raccolta delle rime piacevoli.