Charles COTOLONDI
Arlequiniana ou les bons mots, les histoires plaisantes & agréables
Chez Florenti et Pierre Delaulne.|à Paris 1694|8.50 x 13.80 cm|relié
First edition? A similar edition was published on the same date by the same publisher, but in a slightly larger format, with different collation, different title ornament and without the red and black title page. This edition may be a piracy. A frontispiece depicting Harlequin. Uncommon.
Half vellum binding, later. Smooth spine with title in red ink.
Arlequiniana, which remains a literary curiosity, belongs to a predominant genre of French literature, emerging at the end of the 17th century and flourishing in the first half of the 18th century; these collections of witticisms or amusing stories or Ana whose birth can be traced to the Menagiana in 1693. This genre has the particularity of featuring its own author and dialoguing with its reader, seeming to have no other purpose than to entertain while seeking to educate, for in this century of censorship, literature created this apparently light but satirical and critical mode of society and morals. Charles Cotolondi wrote several works in this field, notably the Evremonmania. Harlequin, thanks to the famous Théâtre de la Foire in Paris had become very famous and represented a type, and it is by design that Cotolondi makes him a kind of wise fool, in the manner of a Scapin for Molière. The whole is a series of conversations, mixing tales and witticisms.
A very caustic table of contents allows one to find all the subjects treated: death, Cardinal Mazarin, the prudence of husbands or M. Lully.
Half vellum binding, later. Smooth spine with title in red ink.
Arlequiniana, which remains a literary curiosity, belongs to a predominant genre of French literature, emerging at the end of the 17th century and flourishing in the first half of the 18th century; these collections of witticisms or amusing stories or Ana whose birth can be traced to the Menagiana in 1693. This genre has the particularity of featuring its own author and dialoguing with its reader, seeming to have no other purpose than to entertain while seeking to educate, for in this century of censorship, literature created this apparently light but satirical and critical mode of society and morals. Charles Cotolondi wrote several works in this field, notably the Evremonmania. Harlequin, thanks to the famous Théâtre de la Foire in Paris had become very famous and represented a type, and it is by design that Cotolondi makes him a kind of wise fool, in the manner of a Scapin for Molière. The whole is a series of conversations, mixing tales and witticisms.
A very caustic table of contents allows one to find all the subjects treated: death, Cardinal Mazarin, the prudence of husbands or M. Lully.
€700