Che K. Zo Vuol Dire?’ a Re-Reading of Mid-Sixteenth-Century Linguistic Debates in the Accademia Fiorentina

From the moment it was formally established, the Accademia Fiorentina proved to be an animated forum for the often heated discussions of contemporary issues in Cinquecento Florence. One of the chief topics of contention in the academy's linguistic debates was concerned with the orthographic reform of the Tuscan language. Many scholars asserted that certain letters of the alphabet were redundant, since they were considered to be unsuitable and inaccurate in reproducing the exact pronunciation of a syllable or word. The letter 'K' (or 'Ca', as it was pronounced) was singled out for particular criticism. Several literary figures, notably Antonfrancesco Grazzini, Agnolo Firenzuola, and Michelangelo Vivaldi, seem to have taken a considerable interest in this issue, and this article attempts to answer the question 'why?'. In the light of the contemporary cultural and linguistic issues being debated within the Academy, 'che voleva dire "K"?'. An important clue lies in the Biblioteca Nazionale manuscript of the Academy'S 'Capitoli, Compositioni, et Leggi'. Throughout this particular manuscript an anonymous scribe has altered the names of some of the academicians cited in the text; for example, next to Giovambattista Gelli, the title 'calzaiuolo' has been changed to 'cazaiuolo'. In a similar fashion, wherever the question of the letter 'K' is mentioned, there is an additional '-zo' added in superscript next to it. The contention of this article is that the discussion of the letter 'K' was transformed by certain letterati connected with the Florentine Academy in the 1540S into a literary ludus through the adoption of an ambivalent erotic register. Double entendres and equivocal language served to equate the 'K' with cazzo, and it was brought to the fore as an ostensibly serious issue in order to mock the pretensions and presumption of the more pedantic linguistic treatises and orthographic reforms of the time

Alphabet · Art · Linguistics · Literature · Novella · Pronunciation · Reading (process · Syllable · Historical Linguistics and Language Studies · History · Linguistic Studies and Language Acquisition · Linguistics and language evolution · Philosophy

• The oral world of the early Accademia Fiorentina

  Open Access•Judith Bryce•Renaissance Studies•1995

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