Giovanni Francesco Biondi’s Chronicle of the War of the Two Roses. An investigation of the author’s appraisal - Poster

This project aims to digitize Giovanni Francesco Biondi’s historical chronicle, L’Istoria delle Guerre Ciuili d’Inghilterra tra le Due Case di Lancastro and Iorc, published in three volumes between 1637 and 1644, so as to create a digital resource for the investigation of the author’s account of the War of the Two Roses, the events leading to it, and the significance of narrating such history in the socio-political context of the mid-1600s. Along with the original Italian text in the Venetian edition, the project also involves the inclusion of the English version of the chronicle, translated by Henry Carey, earl of Monmouth, and published between 1641 and 1646. The translation’s text will be gathered from Early English Books Online and will be implemented after an overviewed spelling normalization through the VARD software. Despite the research already carried out on Giovanni Francesco Biondi, his historical chronicle has dodged much of the scholarly attention, which has instead focused on the author’s biography, his three novels, and his political efforts for the creation of a protestant bridgehead in Italy. Some critics have offered downplaying descriptions of the chronicle, whose reception by English and Italian readers needs still to be thoroughly explored. For this reason, the digitization of the text will be paralleled by a historical and philological investigation to further inquire about the context from which the chronicle emerged. Secondly, a linguistic analysis will be conducted to evaluate the author’s appraisal of the historical events and characters represented in the chronicle, according to the framework of the Appraisal Theory. This computer-based inquiry aims at acquiring linguistic data from the text through KWIC and concordance tools to evaluate the author’s ATTITUDE and his use of GRADUATION, giving particular attention to any textual element concerning his attitudinal JUDGEMENT and APPRECIATION. Given the nature of the text, Appraisal Theory also provides a useful framework for the analysis of the dialogic relationship between the writer and the reader, which will necessarily draw and benefit from the analysis of the Istoria’s paratext and from the above-mentioned historical investigation. Notwithstanding the numerous potential outcomes of this research, it is safe to affirm that any result will provide new insights on the Istoria’s text, context, and author’s apparent intentions.