Wednesday 24 June, 6.30pm
The Italian Library #31. Avviso al popolo! Storia di Venezia
Ornella Tarantola in conversation with Claire Judde de Larivière and Etta Carnelli talks about Venice during the years after 1520
In Italian
In 1520, due to heavy rains, abandoned waste in the streets of Venice washed into the canals, endangering the health of the inhabitants and the very reputation of the Serenissima. The government sends Pasqualin Durazin around the city to proclaim a law forbidding residents from throwing rubbish into public spaces and into the canals.
And it is this ruse that Claire Judde de Larivière uses to tell us about Venice at the time, following the steps of Durazin through a densely populated and cosmopolitan city—from Venetian bankers to German merchants, from the women working in the boteghe to the nobles who governed Venice. She highlights the sense of belonging to this immense city, in all its density and everyday richness.
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Claire Judde de Larivière is a professor of medieval history at the University of Toulouse. She studies the social and political life of the inhabitants of late‑medieval and Renaissance Venice and its lagoon. She has published numerous articles and books on this subject, including The Revolt of the Snowballs. 1511, Murano Confronts Venice (Wetlands, 2022) and A Warning to the People! Venetian Lives in the Sixteenth Century (Wetlands, 2025). Her early work focused on navigation and international trade. In 2005 she translated into French the account of Pietro Querini (Naufragés, Anacharsis) and collaborated on its Italian translation (Il naufragio della Querina, edited by Paolo Nelli, Nutrimenti, 2007).
Etta De Benedetti Reinach was a tenured teacher of English literature in secondary schools in Milan. Still in Italy, she continued as a lecturer in comparative literature. She later lived in Tokyo and Toronto. After returning to Europe, she taught at the University of East London.