Carlo Goldoni and the Construction of Authorship on the Printed Page

Abstract

The transformation of a play composed for the stage into a text printed to be read is a complex operation often mentioned by the playwrights themselves in the prefaces to the editions of their works. The printed publication could become the ‘place’ for perfecting what was performed on stage but it could also, for some authors, become a ‘place’ in which they defended their authorship through the control of the editions, even going so far, in the case of Carlo Goldoni (Venice 1707-Paris 1793), as to break the rules of the book trade. The author attempts to show how the construction of Goldoni’s authorship can be analyzed on three different levels: the expression of the author’s will; his claim for the right to publish his works himself and finally the representation of the figure of the author with the use of a different portrait for each edition.