Lodovica Braida

Lodovica Braida is a Full Professor in History of the book, University of Turin, and member of the Direction Board of «Rivista Storica Italiana» and of the Direction Board of «Società e Storia».

The project

Title: “Bringing down the masks”. Antoine-Alexandre Barbier's Dictionnaire des ouvrages anonymes et pseudonymes (Paris, 1806-1809) and the ambiguity of the “function auteur”.

"The project aims to analyze the ways in which the “author function” (to use Michel Foucault's well-known expression) developed in European culture between the 18th and 19th centuries. At the same time, we are examining the characteristics of the coexistence between the author's authoriality and the apparently paradoxical choice of many authors to publish their works anonymously or under a pseudonym. In particular, I'll be concentrating on part 4 of the project: creating dictionaries of anonymous works and pseudonyms: “bringing down the masks”. In the course of the 19th century, the world of scholarship, and bibliography in particular, seemed to note, or rather, to draw conclusions from a profound change in the conception of intellectual authority: we witnessed the creation of dictionaries of anonymous and pseudonymous works organized on a national scale. In Europe, examples abound: starting with Antoine-Alexandre Barbier's Dictionnaire des ouvrages anonymes et pseudonymes français et latins (Paris, 1806-1809), a model for all other publishing ventures, the following years saw the addition of Gaetano Melzi's Dizionario di opere anonime e pseudonime di scrittori italiani, o come che sia aventi relazione all'Italia (Milan, 1848-1859)."

Selective Bibliography

• Direction: Lire en Europe. Textes, Formes, Lectures (XVIII^e-XXI^e siècle), sous la direction de Lodovica Braida and  Brigitte Ouvry-Vial, Rennes, Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2020.
• Livre: L. Braida, Anonymity in Eighteenth Century Italian Publishing. The Absent Author, New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2022, pp. 222.
• L. Braida, Carlo Goldoni and the Construction of Authorship on the Printed Page, in «Quaerendo», 50, 2020, pp. 241-265.
• L. Braida, Libri “ibridi” per leggere, scrivere e organizzare il tempo. Almanacchi-agenda e ‘memorandum books’ nel Settecento, in Leggere in Europa. Testi, forme, pratiche (XVIII-XXI sec.), a cura di L. Braida, B. Ouvry-Vial, Roma, Carocci, 2023, pp. 299-322.
• L. Braida, «Gli inganni letterari» e i dizionari degli anonimi e degli pseudonimi dell’Ottocento. Gaetano Melzi e il dizionario italiano (1848-1859),  in Le stagioni dell’erudizione e le generazioni di eruditi. Una storia europea (secolo XV-XIX), atti del Convegno Internazionale, Firenze 27-29 aprile 2022,a cura di J. Boutier et al., Bologna, Clueb, 2024, pp. 401-418.