"The engraving of the letters of the Albanian language in the printings of Pjetër Budi", in the frame of "Tragë"

In the framework of the "Tragë" lectures organized by the Department of Folklore at the Institute of Cultural Anthropology and the Study of Art, a lecture was held on the topic "The engraving of the letters of the Albanian language in the prints of Pjetër Budi". The researcher Yll Rugova, after giving an overview of the Albanian typographic and printing activity, based on archival data, stopped at the technical production of the Albanian letters that Budi used in his publications. Pjetër Budi (1566–1622) published four books in total during his active life, including as a missionary for a movement against the Ottoman Empire. In "Christian Doctrine" (printed in Rome in 1618), he uses letters with similar Roman cuts as those in Matrënga. Even "Rituali roman" (1621) and "Pasqyra e t'rfyemit" (1621) were printed in roman letters. Researcher Ylli Rugova argued that in Bud's publications, and then also in Bardhi and Bogdani we find the continuity of special letters for the sounds of Albanian for y, z, th and dh, which we also find in Buzuku for the first time. At Budi they differ in type from Buzuku and are more carefully carved, perhaps under Budi's instructions. Rugova deals extensively with this issue in the study "Albanian Typography 1555-1912", a study published last year (Varg, Prishtina, 2022). The Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Art Studies (IAKSA) is one of the research institutes, an integral part of the Academy of Albanian Studies in Albania. The Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Art Studies consists of: Department of Ethnology, Department of Folklore and Department of Art. The genesis of IAKSA is in 1947, when the Department of Ethnography was founded.