Giovanni Paolo Marana

Giovanni Paolo Marana or sometimes Jean-Paul Marana (1642 - 1693) was a noble Genoese, who participated in 1672 in an unsuccessful conspiracy for passing the town of Savona under the rule of the Dukes of Savoy, moved to France in 1683.

In the early 1670s, the Republic of Genoa was threatened by Louis XIV. Giovanni Paolo Marana, son of a jeweler, was 27 years old at the time and was convinced that the Republic is threatened with invasion by the sea, and in this respect made false plans that he submitted to the palace of the Doge. The hoax was discovered and it comes to the state inquisitors; civil inquisition in cities such as Genoa and Venice was unrelated to religious Inquisition. Marana was sentenced to 5 years imprisonment. In prison, he worked on the translation of the complete works of Seneca, as well as an encoded system of writing.

Letters Writ by a Turkish Spy

Marana is the author of Letters Writ by a Turkish Spy, an epistolary novel which judges the history and manners of Europe and especially of France of his time, from an Oriental perspective.[1] This book was published in Italian in 1684 and in French in 1686.

The French writer and philosopher Montesquieu also drew on this book in his Persian Letters, an epistolary novel published in 1721 criticizing the existing absolute monarchy in France at his own time.

Works
  • Letters Writ by a Turkish Spy
  • La Congiura di Raffaello della Torre con le mosse della Savoia contro la Republica di Genova, In Lione : Alla spese dell'auctore, 1682. OCLC 320756854 (in Italian)
  • Lettre d'un Sicilien à un de ses amis (Letter of a Sicilian to one of his friends), Paris, A. Quantin, 1883. OCLC 20872384 - Read online (in French)
  • L'espion du Grand-Seigneur, et ses relations secrètes envoyées au divan de Constantinople, et découvertes à Paris, pendant le règne de Louis le Grand: contenant les événements les plus considérables arrivés pendant la vie de Louis le Grand, Amsterdam: H. Wetstein and H. Des Bordes, 1684. OCLC 69044670 (in French)
  • Dialogo fra Genova, et Algieri, città fulminate dal Giove Gallico, Amsterdamo : Desbordes, 1685. OCLC 257937505 - Read online (in Italian)
  • Dialogue De Genes et d'Algers Villes foudroyées, Par les Armes Invincibles de Louis Le Grand L'Année 1684 : Avec plusieurs particularitez historiques touchant le juste ressentiment de ce Monarque, et ses prétensions sur la Ville de Genes, avec les réponces des Genois, Amsterdam: Desbordes, 1685. OCLC 258639502 (the previous book in French)

Notes and references
  1. Billaud, p. 267
  • French Wikipedia page for Giovanni Paolo Marana

Bibliography
  • Isabelle Billaud and Marie-Catherine Laperrière, Représentations du corps sous l'Ancien Régime: discours et pratiques, Presses Université Laval, 2007. ISBN 9782763785264
  • Giovanni Paolo Marana, Rosalind Ballaster, Fables of the East: selected tales, 1662-1785, Oxford University Press, 2005. ISBN 9780199267354
  • Roland Mortier et Hervé Hasquin, Etudes sur le XVIIIe siècle, Editions de l'Université de Bruxelles, 1974. ISBN 9782800407685, p. 27 ss.
  • Gian Carlo Roscioni, Sulle tracce dell'esploratore turco, Milano, Rizzoli, 1992 ISBN 88-17-33748-X
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