Poetry and Identity in Quattrocento Naples. Matteo Soranzo

Poetry and Identity in Quattrocento Naples approaches poems as acts of cultural identity by examining how a group of authors used poetry to develop a poetic style, while also displaying their position toward the culture of others. Starting from an analysis of Giovanni Pontano's Parthenopeus and De Amore Coniugali, followed by a discussion of Jacopo Sannazaro's Arcadia, Matteo Soranzo links the genesis and themes of these texts to the social, political and intellectual vicissitudes of Naples under the domination of Kings Alfonso and Ferrante. Delving further into Pontano's literary and astrological production, Soranzo illustrates the consolidation and eventual dispersion of this author's legacy by looking at the symbolic value attached to his masterpiece Urania, and at the genesis of Sannazaro's De Partu Virginis. The strategies of poets writing in neo-Latin and the vernacular during the Aragonese domination, in this way, are used not only as historical evidence, but also to open a dialogue with New Historicism and the social sciences.