Obscene 'Transubstantiation' in Libertine Literature from Venice to London: "La retorica delle puttane" e "The Whore's Rhetorick"

The essay deals with the XVII AIA Conference’s key motifs of appropriation/adaptation, transtextuality, transcodification, as well as of transnationality, with reference to the libertine literature and rhetoric of early-modern Italy and England. It does so by drawing attention to the English appropriation and dialogic adaptation, or dramatic transcodification, of Ferrante Pallavicino’s baroque novel La retorica delle puttane. Composta conforme li precetti di Cipriano. Dedicata alla università delle cortigiane più celebri, (anonymously) published in 1642, that, in England, becomes The Whore’s Rhetorick: Calculated to the Meridian of London, and Conformed to the Rules of Art in Two Dialogues, adapted by an anonymous self-styled “Philo–Puttanus”, and printed in 1683. Actually, as self-consciously suggested by Philo-Puttanus himself in his anti-Romish, mock-theological hints, the English version may be seen as a “bold transubstantiation”, a conversion, that is, of one literary substance into another. The comparative pace of the article sheds light on the fascinating points of imbrication and differentiation, imbued with cultural and political implications, between the two texts.