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What makes a language alive is its rich heritage of both proverbs and idioms, which are part of our daily speech, giving voice to popular wisdom and common sense, not to mention their ironic thrust. These features of proverbs, passed on from generation to generation, are to be widely found in The Betrothed by Alessandro Manzoni. As the most recent studies are showing, proverbs and idioms can be considered the core of Manzoni's linguistic inquiries in his search for a model of language of speech to be used in the novel. The main linguistic tools Manzoni employed for his studies were therefore vocabularies, extensively annotated (such as the Crusca veronese, but also the Vocabolario milaneseitaliano by Francesco Cherubini and the Dictionnaire des proverbes français by Pierre de la Mésangère) and, above all, the Florentine comedians of the XVI, XVII and XVIIIth century. Manzoni treasured these comedies as examples of texts which tried to mirror the oral speech of the Florentines, as the hundreds of notabilia (underlined expressions), including proverbs, attest. This article will highlight some significant cases of concordances between the notabilia and the novel, in order to show the double role of proverbs: a means to portray oral speech (but not only for the dialogues of the less educated characters) and a way to make the prose smooth, as proved by their use in the diegesis or in the historiographic digressions. The study of the Florentine comic tradition not only has affected the language of the novel, but it has even worked at a deeper and creative level, inspiring Manzoni in the creation and development of memorable episodes which were not present in the Fermo e Lucia, the first draft of the novel. This is the case of two well-known episodes, which will be fully analyzed in this contribution: the episode built on the expression fare orecchie da mercante ('to turn a deaf ear') and the creepy refrain «A chi la tocca, la tocca», mumbled by Tonio. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sira’s monologue in Merc. 817 ff. is one of the most well-known scenes in the play: she offers a surprising – and at times paradoxical – meditation on the behaviour of a husband and wife. In the ironic ‘feminism’ of this anus one inevitably glimpses literary constructions and problematic knots, capable of reviving, albeit with a comic smile, a subject of great cultural and legal relevance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]