Carnival in eighteenth-century Europe finds its most fertile ground in the city of Venice, renowned city of diversion where theatre, masquerades and exuberant spectacles of every manner abound overwhelming all aspects of city life. Considering the impact of carnival and its festivities on the everyday life of La Serenissima, it becomes difficult to examine the works of Carlo Goldoni---eighteenth-century Italy's famed playwright and librettist---without pondering the role that carnival folklore and the carnival act played in the realization of his art. In his comedies the import of carnival is thematic in nature and it is emblematic of the author's social criticism. Carnival is presented as essentially ambivalent: on one end of the spectrum it is freedom from the constraints of daily life, a moment for the fulfillment of desires that is fully embraced by the characters, whilst on the other it is a negative force that is reprehended as the instigator of an irrational behaviour antithetical to the author's ideal of bourgeois common sense and moderation. Within the plays the elements of carnival literature and folklore are patently visible, from the process of dissimulation and masking to the overindulgence in food and mocking morbin; all functioning as constituent parts of the colourful and dynamic landscape of Eighteenth century Venice that the author strives to faithfully capture. In the works for music and most particularly in a series of comic opera librettos from 1750 carnival takes on even greater significance, becoming the vehicle of expression through which the author conveys his social themes. The coffee houses, the calli and all the typical locales set for the encounters of Goldoni's characters, are transformed into the topsy turvy reverse worlds of carnival literature. The author's excursion into the fantastic explores the subversive effects of the carnival of the insane, the utopian world of plenty, the travels to exotic lands and places of alternate reality. He combines the typical topoi of carnival folklore with his own moral ideals and this carnivalization of the goldonian universe allows for an innovative and more penetrating analysis of contemporary Venetian society.

Papers in this volume examines the work of Carlo Goldoni in relation to the output of other theatre writers across Europe in the Age of Enlightenment, and also reconsiders Goldoni's work in the light of new questions raised by recent critical discussions.

"This work takes gender as its point of entry into the comedies of Carlo Goldoni (1707-93). The dramatization of femininity and masculinity is explored in conjunction with that of other social categories (class, the family, and age). The plays reinforce the patriarchal association of femininity with the body, with spectacle, and with theatricality, while the dramatic backdrop of Venice and carnival provides a context for the staging of issues relating to identity, disguise and fashion. In the plays, pretence and theatricality vie with bourgeois Enlightenment values of morality, honesty and respectability to produce dramatic tension with distinct gender implications."