Considerazioni su un anonimo ‘Syllabus’ di retorica del Seicento. Un testimone dalla preistoria del «Cannocchiale aristotelico»?

In this article an anonymous book printed in Turin in 1672, overlooked by critics, is described and connected with the works of Emanuele Tesauro. This ‘Syllabus’, a categorical index of rhetorical items, presents some unexpected similarities with the ‘Vocabulario italiano’, a minor dictionary-like work of Tesauro edited from a manuscript only in 2008, and the famous ‘Indice categorico’, an Aristotelian classification of objects belonging to the third chapter of the major work "Il Cannocchiale aristotelico". Studying the structure and the content of the ‘Syllabus’, the authorship of Emanuele Tesauro is proposed and the text is cautiously identified with some drafts based on Aristotle’s "Rhetoric", that are described in the "Cannocchiale" as lost writings.