ORATIO IN LAUDEM CIVITATIS NEAPOLITANAE

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ORATIO IN LAUDEM CIVITATIS NEAPOLITANAE

The Oratio in laudem Civitatis Neapolitane pronounced by Zanobi Acciaioli in the General Chapter of the Dominican Order held on 3 June 1515 in Naples, in the glorious seat of the Convent of San Domenico Maggiore, reveals itself, from a cursory reading, to be the fruit of profound competence in the friar's classical languages and literature. In fact, it presents itself, on the one hand, as an important connection to the traditional descriptive and celebratory topic of Naples as locus amoenus, and on the other, for some of its many peculiarities - from the special occasion that motivated its writing to the author's predilection for the erudite citation of Greek literature, from the 'ideological' reading of the history of Naples to the religious view that replaces the glorious monuments of antiquity with miraculous relics of saints - as an attempt to renew, update and bend the topic of Laus urbis to new purposes, according to the codification of classical rhetorical precepts. A critical edition accompanied by extensive commentary and translation is offered here for the first time.

Author

Antonietta Iacono, associate professor of medieval and humanistic Latin literature at the University of Naples Federico II, conducts textual-critical, philological and literary investigations on humanistic texts, with a clear predilection for humanistic literature from the Aragonese area. Her works are characterized both by the use of a philological-erudite methodology and by the attention to historical-cultural reconstruction.