192 pp. - softbound - printed 2023
series "Quaderni di Storia Postale" - Istituto di Studi Storici Postali, Prato
Italian text with summaries and philological notes in Spanish

THE CORRESPONDENCE OF THE TASSO FAMILY WITH ANTOINE PERRENOT DE GRANVELLE
Postal History Notebooks n.36, 2023

Critical presentation of 158 letters, all of them transcribed, exchanged between twelve members of the Tasso / de Tassis postal family and Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle, a central figure in the service of the Imperial and Spanish monarchy of his time, organizer of information services and profound connoisseur of the mechanisms of imperial administration.

The letters were exchanged between 1541 and 1564, i.e. when the new great European postal revolution had consolidated, above all thanks to the members of the Tasso family: the echoes of this are reflected in the texts, together with the different aspects of the personality of the different actors, their lives and aspirations, as well as the politics, diplomacy, history and culture of the time.

The volume also contains the transcription criteria, the description of the manuscripts, the list of letters published in tables showing the archival signature, the city of departure, the date, the sender and the recipient, the language in which the letter was written.

From the point of view of Italian philology, these letters are of great importance: written by their own hand, the letters of the Tassis constitute a linguistic corpus of great intensity. They are in fact written in an Italian contaminated with other languages by uneducated people, who write with uncertainty, almost phonetically, with a local lexicon and an insecure and fluctuating handwriting.
Given the linguistic singularity, the criteria of this publication are conservative in order to preserve the language of a particular social group.