Chapter «The metropolis of Great Britain»: Londra nelle lettere e nel dizionario di Giuseppe Baretti

Abstract

Giuseppe Baretti was the most famous master of Romance languages in eighteenth-century London, where he spent two long periods, from 1751 to 1760, and from 1766 until his death in 1789. Given his temperament, social attitude, education and interests, as well as the native-like proficiency in English he soon acquired there, he became part of London’s cultural elite and an appreciated linguistic and cultural mediator between Britain and Italy. The present study focuses on the way Baretti described and commented on London – its cityscape, institutions, and inhabitants – in his published letters and the bilingual English-Italian and Italian-English dictionary he compiled.