«Tutto ciò è necessario alla Sarda nazione non men che a tutte le altre dell’Europa». La tradizione manoscritta e a stampa del Ripulimento della lingua sarda di Matteo Madau

murgia, giulia

2023-01-01

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Abstract

The contribution focuses on the manuscript and printed textual tradition of the "Ripulimento della lingua sarda", the work in which Abbot Matteo Madau began the first studies of Sardinian linguistics. Madau, in fact, is the first to articulate the linguistic individuality of Sardinian in a pan-European perspective, of "traffic between languages", that is, from the perspective of linguistic contact with the other Romance languages. The study - conducted on the editio princeps printed in Cagliari in 1782 and on the autograph manuscript, in two volumes, currently preserved at the University Library of Cagliari, and supported by an excavation in the archive documentation - investigates the editorial process of the work and delves into Madau's linguistic thought. To obtain the affirmation of a renewed dignity of Sardinian and its desirable cultural primacy in the Europe of the Enlightenment, Madau proposes, in fact, to take the path already opened and followed by other cultural languages: the time has come, believes the abbot, that the tools that intellectuals have developed for the other European languages ​​- both in order to offer a linguistic description and to deploy their imaginative power (i.e. a grammar, a vocabulary and a poem) - are also developed for the Sardinian.