«Nel cantiere di Leonardo Bruni». Sulla tradizione manoscritta dell’Epistolario: le redazioni in 8 e in 9 libri

Leonardo Bruni’s official Epistolary has come down to us in two different textual forms, consisting, respectively, of eight and nine books of letters, whose exact relation with each other has been long investigated by scholars. The purpose of this paper is to define the original structure of both textual forms, as well as their mutual connection, thereby trying to reconstruct the progressive stages of the Epistolary’s composition and authorial revision. This attempt is first carried out with reference to the contemporary mentions of this work, i.e. those immediately following its first circulation in 1440, and then through careful analysis of the remarkable features of its manuscript tradition. While the transmission of the nine-book recension appears to be essentially homogeneous, the eight-book textual form proves to be somehow more problematic and is therefore more thoroughly investigated. Particular attention is paid, on this regard, to some inscriptions that identify a group of witnesses as descendent from Bruni’s originalis, as well as to the related transmission of ‘extravagant’ letters in witnesses of the eight-book Epistolary.