Daria di Stefano

The project aims to analyze the correspondence preserved at the Bufalini Archive in San Giustino, limited to the period from 1500 to 1641, with particular attention to analyzing the role of senders and recipients, the relationships between them, their linguistic level, and their writing skills. The intended research is based on defining what has here been termed profiles of investigation: diachronic (establishing a chronological guide to the archival correspondence); diatopic (analyzing the figures of senders and recipients, with the ultimate goal of defining the relationships maintained—within Italy and beyond—by the Bufalini family during the designated time frame); content-based (identifying the main topics of discussion); linguistic (understanding the level of literacy of the correspondents and their language use); paleographic/codicological (paleographic analysis of each writer’s hand, paying particular attention to those of the Bufalini family, in order to determine if there are correspondences among family handwriting, also considering an analysis of the medium on which each writer worked).