Alunno - Fabrica del Mondo - 1562

THE FACTORY OF THE WORLD: DANTE, PETRARCA AND BOCCACCIO, NOMINATORS OF THINGS
Just as Odysseus rules the world by naming things, so Francesco Alunno attempts to reconstruct the entire universe of the Italian language through the words of its three greatest authors: Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio. The Fabrica del Mondo is not merely a lexical repertory, but one of the first great European attempts to catalogue reality through language. Published in Venice in 1562 in the expanded and corrected edition by Francesco Rampazetto, the work gathers thousands of vocabularies, expressions, and linguistic forms drawn from the great vernacular literature, becoming the most authoritative reference tool for scholars, jurists, preachers, and humanists of the Renaissance. Anticipating by several decades the Vocabolario dell’Accademia della Crusca, the Fabrica del Mondo represents a milestone in the birth of Italian lexicography. The specimen preserves the authentic contemporary binding in full parchment, an element always appreciated by collectors of Renaissance linguistic texts.
WHY TO BUY
One of the first great dictionaries of the Italian language.
A fundamental work in the history of lexicography before the Crusca.
Built entirely on the lexicon of Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio.
An indispensable tool for understanding the formation of literary Italian.

MARKET VALUE
The sixteenth-century editions of the Fabrica del Mondo are consistently sought after by collectors of lexicography, Italian philology, and Dante studies. Complete copies of the Venetian editions of the XVI century appear relatively rarely on the international market. Copies in similar condition, preserved in their contemporary binding and with normal signs of use, are typically valued between €1,000 and €2,500, while particularly fresh copies or those from important historical libraries can command higher prices.

PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION AND CONDITION
In folio. Frontispiece with a large woodcut typographic mark. Contemporary full parchment binding, worn, with manuscript title on the spine and old annotations on the rear board. Spine restored and showing signs of use. Small worming present in the initial leaves and gradually disappearing after about twenty leaves. Guard attachments reinforced. Some tears and stains, more evident in the lower outer corner of some leaves. Complete, genuine specimen. Leaves [38], 262 [i.e. 264]. In old books, with a centuries-long history, there may be some imperfections not always noted in the description. This listing contains AI visualizations. Please refer to the original photographs to verify the actual condition of the item. The images are an integral part of the description.

FULL TITLE AND AUTHOR
Francesco Alunno da Ferrara.
Della Fabrica del Mondo di M. Francesco Alunno da Ferrara, nella quale si contengono le voci di Dante, del Petrarca, del Boccaccio, & d’altri buoni autori... Di nuovo ristampata, corregta et ampliata.
Venezia, Francesco Rampazetto, 1562.

CONTEXT AND SIGNIFICANCE
The Fabrica del Mondo represents one of the decisive moments in the construction of the Italian language. In an era when Italian did not yet have a widely shared standard, Alunno transformed Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio into the great legislators of the vernacular, systematically collecting their lexical patrimony and offering scholars a tool capable of guiding writing according to the models deemed most authoritative. More than a simple linguistic repertory, the volume is an attempt to order the world through words, building a geography of knowledge founded on literature. For decades it was one of the main working tools for scholars, notaries, preachers, and students, exerting a decisive influence on the codification of literary Italian.

BIOGRAPHY OF THE AUTHOR
Francesco Alunno da Ferrara (c. 1484–1556) was among the most important grammarians, philologists, and lexicographers of the Italian Renaissance. He devoted much of his activity to the study of the vernacular and to the systematization of the lexicon drawn from the great Trecento authors. His works enjoyed widespread editorial diffusion and prepared the ground for the birth of modern Italian lexicography, directly influencing the subsequent work of the Accademia della Crusca.

PRINTING HISTORY AND CIRCULATION
The first edition of the Fabrica del Mondo appeared in Venice in 1546 and was immediately very successful. In the following decades the work was printed again, expanded and corrected several times, testifying to its enormous diffusion among Italian humanist circles. The 1562 edition belongs to the mature phase of the work and is one of the most complete versions published in the sixteenth century. Its broad circulation decisively contributed to the formation of Renaissance linguistic taste and to the future development of Crusca’s Vocabolario.

BIBLIOGRAPHY AND REFERENCES
EDIT16, CNCE 1368.
ICCU – OPAC SBN, record of the Venetian edition of 1562.
Adams, Catalogue of Books Printed on the Continent of Europe.
Mortimer, Italian Sixteenth Century Books.
BM STC Italian Books.
USTC – Universal Short Title Catalogue, editions of Francesco Alunno.
Gianfranco Folena, La lessicografia italiana dalle origini alla Crusca.
Mirko Tavoni, Storia della lingua italiana. Il primo Cinquecento.
Amedeo Quondam, Il volgare come lingua della cultura nel Rinascimento.
Enciclopedia Dantesca, entries dedicated to the linguistic fortune of Dante in the XVI century.