Family Name: Antonini
First Name: Annibale
Birth Date: 1701
Birth Place: S. Biagiosa
Death Date: Jul, 1755
Death Place: Salerno
Main places of activity:
Place To
Naples 1721
Place From To
Paris 1725 1749
Place From To
Naples 1749 1754
Personal info:
Education

A member of a wealthy family of landowners in the countryside near Salerno, Antonini studied humanities in Naples under the supervision of his brother Giuseppe before completing his education and taking his vows in Rome.

Antonini afterwards left Italy for a Grand Tour, which included England, the Netherlands and Germany, before settling in Paris around 1726.
Career

Abbé Antonini taught Italian for twenty-five years, quickly establishing himself as one of the best maître d'italien of the Parisian high society and enlightened salons. He especially taught noblewomen and women of letters.

As a distinguished lexicographer and grammarian, Antonini also published several tools to organise teaching, such as dictionaries, conversation textbooks, grammars and a collection of templates of letters, contributing to define the general rules of the Italian language, especially in relation to French.

Antonini praised and propagated Italian culture by additionally editing and reissuing classical authors such as Torquato Tasso, Giovanni Giorgio Trissino or Ludovico Ariosto.
Translations Other Works

translations activities

Notwithstanding his many activities as a linguist, Antonini only published two translations in his name.

In Paris, he issued a French version of Paolo Rolli's response to Voltaire's Essais sur la poésie épique, in order to illustrate with his colleague and friend the riches of the Italian language that the philosophe had scorned.

Towards the end of his life, at the request of Raimondo di Sangro, Prince of Sansevero, Antonini also produced an Italian version of the freemason classic Les Voyages de Cyrus from Andrew Ramsay, printed in Naples in 1753.

Antonini also edited the first Italian translation of Fontenelle's Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes, prompted by an anonymous French noblewoman in Paris in 1748.

secondary bibliography references

Anna Buiatti, 'Antonini, Annibale', Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. III, 1961.

Maria Luisa Cappello, 'Les Ouvrages grammaticaux et lexicographiques d'Annibale Antonini et leurs échos en Italie au XVIIIe siècle', Documents pour l'histoire du français langue étrangère ou seconde, 18 (1996), 261-8.

Marina Marietta, 'Grammariens et maîtres d'italien en France sous l'Ancien Régime', Parola del testo, XVIII, n°1/2 (2014), 85-96.

Marina Marietta, 'Un maître d'italien à Paris au XVIIIe siècle: l'abbé Antonini', Parola del testo, XIX, n°1/2 (2015), 69-82.

Helen Sanson, 'Grammatiche dell'italiano 'Pour Les Dames' nel Settecento: Antonio Curioni tra Parigi e Londra', The Italianist, 36, n°3 (2016), 447-470.

Norma Romanelli, 'Le Grammatiche di Italiano per Francesi di Annibale Antonini (1726-1746)', Studi Italiani di Linguistica Teorica e Applicata, 46, n°2 (2017), 303-20.

Translations

  • Remarks upon M. Voltaire's Essay on the epick poetry of the European nations

  • Translation Title: Examen de l'essai de M. de Voltaire sur la poësie epique
  • Original Author: Paolo Rolli
  • Original title: Remarks upon M. Voltaire's Essay on the epick poetry of the European nations
  • Publ. Year From: 1727 to:
  • lang: English
  • Translation: Examen de l'essai de M. de Voltaire sur la poësie epique
  • Publisher: Rollin fils
  • Pub. Place: Paris
  • Pub. Date: 1727
  • Lang: French
  • Note:

  • Les voyages de Cyrus

  • Translation Title: I Viaggi di Ciro tradotti dall'idioma francese
  • Original Author: Andrew Michael Ramsay
  • Original title: Les voyages de Cyrus
  • Publ. Year From: 1726 to:
  • lang: French
  • Translation: I Viaggi di Ciro tradotti dall'idioma francese
  • Pub. Place: Naples
  • Pub. Date: 1752
  • Lang: Italian
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By:

  • Giovanni Lista