SERIMAN Zaccaria Viaggi di Enrico Wanton alle terre incognite australi, ed ai regni delle scimmie, e de’ cinocefali. Nuovamente tradotti da un manoscritto inglese.

Voir Sabin 79229 (pour l'éd. anglaise de 1772: "An ideal work, abounding with character, sentiment and philosophical observation"); Gove, The Imaginary Voyage in Prose and Fiction, pp. 114-160; Gibson and Patrick, Utopias and Dystopias, 1500-1750.

Seconde édition, entièrement refondue, augmentée, et avec d'importantes additions. La première illustrée de la grande carte montrant la province des philosophes ("Provincia de Filosofi") ainsi que le règne des Têtes de chien ("Regno de' cincefali"). Les 32 gravures dessinent des singes, dressés comme des êtres humains dans des décors rappelant des palais vénitiens, sont probablement inspirés par les tableaux de Pietro Longhi (1701-1785).

Cette édition publiée à l'adresse de Berne (elle fut en réalité publiée à Venise) contient non seulement pour la première fois le nouveau chapitre sur le pays des chiens, mais elle est également enrichie du portrait de l'héros "Enricus Wanton Anglus" ainsi que de la belle carte du pays imaginaire. Elle est "exceedingly rare and seldom catalogued, any edition is worth adding to a collection" (Davidson).

"Dampier's and Swift's use of the simian trope of as a way to capture Antipodal monstrousness was taken further in the utopian novel Viaggi di Enrico Wanton alle Terre Incognite Australi by Zaccaria Seriman, first published in 1749 and expanded in 1764. The first part of the novel takes the protagonist, a young Englishman named Enrico (Henry), to the Antipod rego delle scimie, the kingdom of the apes. As a classic antipodal inversion, the simian kingdom is a satire clearly aimed at Seriman's hometown of Venice, lampooning in true Enlightenment fashion the lagoon republic's baroque refinement of manners and customs. Antipodal monstrosity serves here again as a form of embodied satire that articulates by way of physiologial otherness a feeling of alienating sameness. In other words, Seriman's kingdom the apes is not monstruous because of its beastlike inhabitants, but because it raises the question of whether the Antipodeans ape their European counterparts, or vice versa. Monstrosity in Seriman’s Antipodal utopia is, in the end, an excess of sameness” (Daniel Hempel, in : Australia as the Antipodal Utopia, 2019, p. 119).

"[Seriman's] work is presented in the form of an imaginary voyage and contains many of the conventions of the genre. Two young men are shipwrecked on what is obviously the coast of Australia. They first spend some time in the land of the monkey people. Their study of that society provides a method through which Seriman is able to satirize eighteenth- century Venetian society. In the second part of the book the hero visits the land of the dog-headed people. There, an absolute monarch, despite his pessimistic view of human nature, has organized a group of philosopher statesmen as advisers through whom he attempts to create an orderly society… Despite the claims on the title page, except for a few excerpts, the work has not been translated into English" (Lewis, Utopian Literature, p. 175-6).

Très bon exemplaire, rares petites taches notamment sur le premier titre; petites éraflures.

Provenance : Molina (nom doré en queue de chaque volume).