WYNNE, Giustiniana.

£9,500 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

Les Morlaques. Very rare first edition of the author's major work, an anthropological novel exploring the customs, folk poetry, character, and national identity of the Morlachs, the pastoral people who lived in the mountains of Dalmatia. Following the inland expansion of Venice's borders into Dalmatia between 1688 and 1718, the Morlachs and their political administration became subjects of significant public discourse. Wynne's novel draws inspiration from an influential anthropological study by Alberto Fortis, Viaggio in Dalmazia (1774). In this work, Fortis identifies the Morlachs as Slavs, praising their "spirits uncorrupted by the society we call civilized". Influenced by similar Rousseauist ideals, Wynne's novel depicts the Morlachs as an almost idyllic pastoral society which, as the narrative progresses, gradually becomes aware of its connection to a broader Slavic identity, awakened by news of Russian military campaigns against the Ottoman Empire in southe-astern Europe.Wynne "managed in her unique anthropological novel to transmute Venice's nervous sensitivity to the Slavic affiliations of its Dalmatian subjects into a philosophical study... Wynne took Fortis's work to its implicit conclusion, enunciating the Enlightenment's intellectually triumphant ascription of national identity to the peoples of Eastern Europe" (Wolff, p. 181). The novel was well received both in Italy and in Europe. Melchiorre Cesarotti, translator of Ossian and a friend of Fortis, described the b

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