“M’apparecchio a squadrare i Portoghesi con molta cura”. Il Portogallo nelle Lettere familiari di Giuseppe Baretti a’ suoi tre fratelli

Resumen

Abstract

 This article studies Giuseppe Baretti's odeporic text Lettere Familiari a' suoi tre Fratelli Filippo, Giovanni e Amedeo, published in two volumes (Milan 1762, Venice 1763), later reprinted in England in a much larger version with the title Journey from London to Genoa, through England, Portugal, Spain and France (1770). In particular, the focus is on the thirty letters dedicated to Portugal, where the Piemontese traveller stayed from 29th August to 22nd September 1760.  The reading of the Portuguese letters is preceded by a necessary reflection on the problematic classification of the text within the odeporic literature very much in vogue in the 18th century, which takes into account the critical contributions of various specialists of the work of the Piemontese author (Anglani, Barberi Squarotti, Bigi, Guagnini). The study continues with a critical reading of the portuguese letters, in which the prevailing egotistical and individualistic posture of Baretti, as traveller-narrator is highlighted. Always on the edge of irony and parody, often in burlesque tones, he delivers to "readers" a text of certain descriptive interest, but in which his critical, polemical, when not explicitly negative judgement prevails on the kingdom of Portugal he visited.