Ai confini dell’immaginario: il meraviglioso bestiario dei tipografi

Abstract

Soon to be published, the fifth volume of Giuseppina Zappella's Marche dei tipografi ed editori europei is specifically dedicated to animals. A picture emerges that is very different from the one we are familiar with, full of symbols that are sometimes indecipherable, that makes us perceive the immense gap that separates ancient zoology from modern zoology, but nevertheless fascinates and intrigues us with its beliefs and legends. Through these figures, of which only a very limited exemplification is offered here, we can gain an insight into what the animal world represented for the ancient typographers and their contemporaries (figurative rendering, monsters and animals of the new worlds, popular traditions, iconographic conventions, the typographer's microcosm, the symbolism of hieroglyphics and emblems, the artists' intervention). The main research criterion is based on interdisciplinary interpretation that aims at the "integration" of knowledge involving different specialisations, from iconology to book history, heraldry, philology, religion, historical and scientific disciplines.