«Nobile e grande, lo dirò pure, la sola vita me fece»: la nobiltà secondo Antonio Piazza

This article analyses the representation of the aristocracy that Antonio Piazza’s novels convey. It suggests that this Venetian writer, who was receptive to the Enlightenment and its principles, resorted to his novels to define the qualities of the true aristocrat and transformed some of his pages into witty satires of the aristocracy’s vices, keeping in mind the eighteenth-century Venetian society and his readers’ tastes. Special attention is payed to the novel "Il nobile immaginario" (1771), which pivots on the narrative application of Piazza’s theories on nobility.