The "panther" of syntax between grammar and publishing: the case of Gaetano Tizzone and his Grammatica volgare

This article focuses on Gaetano Tizzone, one of the most interesting but rather unknown figures who worked on the grammar of Tuscan during the first half of the 16th century, whose grammatical principles are summed up in his Grammatica volgare. Tizzone’s work, as we will show in the paper, shares some key features with the most important grammatical treatises of the period, but is also peculiar in its underlying attention towards syntax. Moreover, we will try and analyze how his main syntactic intuitions had a role in another aspect of his work: the author in fact dedicated himself to the study of grammar as well as to editorial activity, and in his editions of Boccaccio’s youth works the form of the texts seems to be clearly influenced by the grammatical filter operated by Tizzone himself. After a brief introduction on the connection between grammar and editing, we will dedicate section 2 to the presentation of the few data we have about Tizzone’s life. After that, in section 3 we will focus on the structure and on the core features of the Grammatica volgare, in comparison to the most important grammatical works of the Renaissance, with specific regard on the metalanguage used by the author and all phenomena connected to syntax that emerge from the treatise, both at a micro- and at a macro-syntactic level. In particular, we will analyze Tizzone’s definition of sentence (section 3.3) and of punctuation (section 3.4). We will then proceed in section 4 to compare the results of the analysis on the Grammatica volgare with the literary works Tizzone edited, with particular attention to the Fiammetta and Filocolo, trying to find trace of his syntactic intuitions in the way he edited Boccaccio’s work. In conclusion, we will try and sum up the results and underline what they entail as far as the syntactic awareness of the author and the role of syntax in his grammatical elaboration are concerned.