LA TESTIMONIANZA DEI VENEZIANISMI IN FLORIO, CORYATE E JONSON

Author: Ronnie Ferguson | Language: Italian | Permalink

This documentary analysis of seventeenth-century written English highlights the presence of words borrowed into English from Venetian dialect. This research field, hitherto largely unexplored, is beginning to yield important results. These indicate that a significant part of the Italian lexical and cultural heritage in English entered the language via Venetian, with an exceptional concentration around 1600. Three key works from the period are analysed for their impact in this area: the two editions of John Florio’s dictionary A Worlde of Wordes (1598 and 1611), Coryats Crudities by Thomas Coryate (1611) and Volpone by Ben Jonson (1607).