Van Hamme, Clément
Amelot de La Houssaye and Venice: the Anti-Myth and its Workshop
- 2024.
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Amelot’s Histoire du gouvernement de Venise (1676) was the first book to openly defend the idea of the decline of the Venetian Republic, and is therefore considered a milestone in the history of its political myth. The biographical context and the complex editorial fate of this History and of the works published by Amelot after it was banned have not yet given rise to a dedicated synthesis. They have however undoubtedly contributed as much as the work’s content to the emergence of a counter-myth of Venice in modern Europe. A clarification of Amelot de La Houssaye’s Venetian works is therefore necessary, which this article initiates on the basis of partly unnoticed sources.