5 - Seduction, Introspection, Experimentation: The Epistolary Code Switching of Giustiniana Wynne

Summary

Abstract

This study explores the code switching into French in the Italian letters of the Anglo-Venetian author Giustiniana Wynne (1737-1791) to her Venetian lover, the patrician Andrea Memmo. Written during a prolonged absence from Venice, the letters chronicle Wynne's travels through Italy, France and England, offering vivid accounts of a series of adventures that befell her. At the same time, they record her intense emotional turmoil created by complications in her relationship with Memmo before and during this separation, and by her determination to keep Memmo's interest in her aroused. This chapter discusses the ways in which French informs epistolary strategies of seduction in Wynne's letters, facilitates introspective delvings, and enhances experimentation with stances expressing a newly emerging self-identity.

Keywords: Giustiniana Wynne, eighteenth century love letters, epistolary seduction strategies, epistolary code switching, Italian-French

The Anglo-Venetian author Giustiniana Wynne (1737-1791) is perhaps best known for her anthropological novel, Les Morlaques (1788), considered today to be the prototype of the genre and the first novel published in Italy by a woman. Like Les Morlaques, her other works – moral and sentimental essays, memoirs, Venetian and Oriental novellas, an ‘occasional’ poem, a chronicle of festive Venice, and a ‘philosophical’ guide book – were also written in French though published either in Venice or London.

Her literary career began officially when she was forty-five. However we see her voice as a writer already emerging in the letters she wrote in her twenties to her Venetian lover, Andrea Memmo, during a prolonged absence from Venice. They chronicle her travels through Italy, France and England, and offer vivid accounts of a series of adventures that befall her during her long stays in Paris and London. At the same time, they record the emotional turmoil she was dealing with, having had to accept an imposed severance of her relationship with Memmo and face the public derision and political hostility that accompanied it. Furthermore, having been forced unwillingly back into the courtship game, she found herself continually confronting new dangers lurking in its shadows, ranging from importuning suitors to death threats and arrest warrants. The letters capture her acute awareness of her vulnerability as she faced one challenge after another and wondered what she could hope for as a future for herself.