Talk:Andrea di Robilant

Untitled

This article survived an AfD. The discussion can be found here. enochlau (talk) 23:12, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

I still maintain that a) as of January 2006, he's not yet enough of a notable to figure here and b) at any rate, this page is entirely not encyclopedic enough to stay. --Svartalf 16:00, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Hard to disagree with Svartalf. And yet there's something vaguely notable going on here. i can't decide if it's the book itself (move this article to book title?) or one of the people in it: Giustiniana, who is also mentioned in Casanova's memoirs. Actually I might be the inadvertant cause of this article, as I bunged in a ref to this book as illustrative of C18th Venice - no one's removed it, so I guess folk have thought it worth while... But that is not the same as having an article, of course. JackyR | Talk 00:00, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Suggested move

I think this article should be moved. It's not really the author who is notable so much as the people about whom he is writing, and currently the amount of info doesn't warrant having more than one article. I'm not sure if the article should be A Venetian Affair or Giustiniana Wynne, with suitable redirects. I'm inclined to the latter: thoughts, anyone? JackyR | Talk 15:12, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Is the book itself notable enough to deserve an article? Being published, and translated into English are not really criteria, not in a civilization that invented the concept of "publish or perish", and where the presses must be fed, if with tripe, just so that media (and store shelf) space can be occupied by this or that publisher. Mentioning a known character is not a criterion either, or all the trip written around the Arthurian myth would be also, yet, only a few remain memorable. Also, I'd assume that if the book is notable, then the author automatically becomes so too. --Svartalf 19:42, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, both book and author fall slightly below my personal idea of notability; but I recognise this is out of step with what happens across WP. Giustiniana Wynne, one of the subjects of the book, however, was a minor celebrity in three countries. She attracted the attention (and gossip) of such different personalities as Casanova and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, finally marrying an Austrian aristocrat and imperial ambassador to Venice.

Apparently there is a field of scholarship devoted to Casanova (strange idea, but there you are). In the early C20th, a casanovista (Gustav Gugitz)identified Giustiniana as the Mlle XCV who features prominently in Casanova's memoirs. In the 1920s, another historian (Bruno Brunelli) published a book about G and Memmo, the other subject of A Venetian Affair, based on handwritten books of copies of G's letters to M. More letters from G to M were found by James Rives Childs, who published excerpts in Casanova Gleanings, his newsletter. Casanovistas have apparently been seeking the other part of the story for years - and this is it: M's letters to G found in the palazzo attic by di Robilant's father. The Venetian Affair is actually a synthesis of all the available letters and Casanova's writings.

So this book completes a long-running story. I still don't find that hugely notable - though it's a bit more significant than, as you so rightly say, all the tripe about King Arthur. But I think G could reasonably support an article, in which case di Robilant and the book title could redirect there (the topic certainly doesn't warrant multiple articles as yet). JackyR | Talk 00:01, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Hm. It.wiki has articles on both Memmo and Giustiniana_Wynne. So following my own arguments about cross-wiki notability, I should clearly make matching articles here! JackyR | Talk 00:24, 5 September 2006 (UTC)