Attribution, Imposture, and Interpretation: Galileo, Poetry, and the Digitized <i>Il dispregio della corte</i> (1601)

This article considers a previously unremarked manuscript edition of an early sixteenth-century poem written on the last page of an early seventeenth-century book in the British Library. A pasted bookseller’s catalogue entry and handwritten notes on the inside cover attribute the verses to Galileo Galilei (1564–1642). No other documentation connects the book or the poem to him, and the analysis begins from the premise that a forgery is certainly possible. The article then assesses the ways in which different humanistic methods of analysis support or undermine the interpretation of the book-manuscript hybrid as an imposture, misattribution, or authentic Galilean manuscript.