Re: New book - "Explaining the Tarot"

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Ludophone wrote: 08 Nov 2017, 12:35 Thanks, I'll keep an eye out for it. Depaulis referred to it as Ferrarese in 2009. As he is one of the co-authors, did he change his opinion or was it the other co-authors that challenged the provenance?
It was never a matter of challenging any consensus on the provenance, as none has been established.

Thierry Depaulis wrote this part of the introduction to the Anonymous Discourse, and made the argument on pp. 38-40 of Explaining the Tarot that the author was probably neither from Ferrara, or Venice.

Although the author's trump order makes it an Eastern (Dummett's "B") order, it matches no other list. There are no Pope or Popess, the places of the Chariot and Fortitude are switched, and Temperance is called Prudence. We can not therefore assign the author's tarot to any specific place, except to broadly note that it is not A or Southern (Bologna and Florence), nor C or Western.

The author's vocabulary and spelling might help to narrow the possibllities, with the caveat that we do not have, with any security, the autograph. Pratesi had noted a few terms that suggested places as far apart as Venice and Rome. Depaulis, consulting with Claire Lesage, assistant professor of Italian at the University of Rennes, considered that the vocabulary contains typically southern Italian card playing vocabulary with some northern terms. Based on vocabulary, they estimate that the best place to locate the author's tarot is thus the Marches, offering Pesaro, tentatively, as satisfying the evidence.
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Re: New book - "Explaining the Tarot"

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Since this book is long out of print and the nearest library that holds it requires a long haul flight, it would be best for me to just ask some questions regarding the game described by the anonymous discourse. Is there some clue as how this game was played? I'm aware that there was mention of bergigole and perhaps the earliest description of bagatto ultimo (two centuries before the next source). What about number of players, cards, terminology, or even rotation?

Re: New book - "Explaining the Tarot"

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Hi Ludophone, it is back in print, on demand at Lulu. In a new edition, a little added, same price. Pick your language/location at the top right, I'm default in France, don't know where you are.
http://www.lulu.com/shop/ross-caldwell- ... 57214.html

See at Google Books for a preview of the general introduction and the first 17 pages (beginning of Piscina)
https://books.google.fr/books?id=RnxeDw ... &q&f=false

A recent review by Sherryl Smith
https://tarot-heritage.com/2018/07/03/t ... rot-cards/

Any game hints we talk about in the notes. Off the top of my head, neither mentions the number of players, or the total number of cards. For Piscina, we would presume 78, all the pips, as was normal in Piemonte in the earliest evidence, but for Anonymous who can say, maybe he used a shortened pack. The number 10 for pips is not mentioned. Not much for special ludic terminology, and of course nothing like the detail of rotation, presumably counterclockwise, traditional. I guess it would only matter if it were not.
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