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From Vienna Castelvetro’s fruit, herbs and vegetabes in German

After reflecting on the point of disseminating outside of  Italy works that would struggle to find readers, the Italian Cultural Institute of Vienna recently turned its attention to Giacomo Castelvetro’s treatise Brieve racconto di tutte le radici, di tutte l’erbe e di tutti i frutti che crudi o cotti in Italia si mangiano (London, 1614) and had it translated into modern German, Eine kurze Beschreibung aller Wurzeln, Kräuter und Früchte, die in Italien gegessen werden

The initiative, coordinated by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation and linked to the fifth edition of the Week of Italian Cuisine in the World, is aimed at contributing to the “culture of ingredients”, which is a key feature of Italian cuisine. The treatise, whose author was jokingly referred to as Brieve racconto, was a precursor of the promoting of “Italian style” we are familiar with today as regards the use, preparation and eating of the ingredients provided by nature. It is a text which – in addition to descriptions of plants and recipes – also contains many interesting reflections on intercultural differences. Almost throughout, it can also be interpreted as proposing a vegetarian diet. The idea of translating this work into an easier-to-understand modern German, with just the odd flourish of Castelvetro’s rather complicated seventeenth-century style, stems from the conviction that among the vast number of works in the public domain, there are some that are still very much relevant today and deserve to be translated, given the knowledge and messages they contain. And Brieve racconto is, undoubtedly, one such work.

Eine kurze Beschreibung aller Wurzeln, Kräuter und Früchte, die in Italien gegessen werdenVienna, Istituto italiano di Cultura, 2020. Translated by Samuela Aloisi, Fabrizio Iurlano and Ernst Kanitz, assisted by Giuseppe Masi and Violetta Procopio on terminological issues. Layout by Paola Battipede.

Licenza Creative Commons CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

The original Italian text is available on www.liberliber.it  at this link.

 

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