Re: Tarocchi goes west
Posted: 21 Nov 2018, 16:03
Sandy, in the second article you link above, by Franco Pratesi in 1988, he lists the cards in the order they trump one another in the play of the game recounted in the text, and the Bagatella is certainly among them -
"Several hypotheses have been proposed above, concerning the cards described in the text; finally, it may be useful to come back again to the mere evidence. In the initial part of the comedy ten cards are described and a discussion is provided as their exact order for winning tricks, which is acknowledged to be the following: 1. Imperatore, 2. Papa, 3. Matto, 4. Bagatella, 5. Fortezza, 6. Temperanza, 7. Giustizia, 8. Carro, 9. Rota, 10. Vecchio."
Pratesi was able to speculate freely back in 1988; I am sure he would be more careful now. In a poetic text that does not explicitly list all the cards in order, i.e. like the tarocchi appropriati genre - we cannot take it to represent some standard kind of game or order of trumps, and build a theory of the game around it. The game and the cards are much more a literary prop than a diagnostic description. The value of the information has to be weighed by comparison of what we know to be generally true.
But first we would need a workable translation of the whole thing.
"Several hypotheses have been proposed above, concerning the cards described in the text; finally, it may be useful to come back again to the mere evidence. In the initial part of the comedy ten cards are described and a discussion is provided as their exact order for winning tricks, which is acknowledged to be the following: 1. Imperatore, 2. Papa, 3. Matto, 4. Bagatella, 5. Fortezza, 6. Temperanza, 7. Giustizia, 8. Carro, 9. Rota, 10. Vecchio."
Pratesi was able to speculate freely back in 1988; I am sure he would be more careful now. In a poetic text that does not explicitly list all the cards in order, i.e. like the tarocchi appropriati genre - we cannot take it to represent some standard kind of game or order of trumps, and build a theory of the game around it. The game and the cards are much more a literary prop than a diagnostic description. The value of the information has to be weighed by comparison of what we know to be generally true.
But first we would need a workable translation of the whole thing.