Arcadia, festa e performance alla corte dei re D’Aragona (1442-1503)

In the fifteenth-century Italian courts, the imagery of song accompanied by the ‘lira’ expressed the modern symbol of ancient oral poetry. The ‘new’ humanist poetsinger, exemplified by the mythological figures of Apollo, Amphion, and Orpheus, became part of Aragonese court festivals and elite entertainments. Jacopo Sannazzaro’s Arcadia was an extraordinary catalyst of this lyrical and performative tradition of poetry and a literary projection of theatrical vision. This article proposes a reading of Sannazaro’s Arcadia as a ‘re-presentation’ in a literary poem of oral and performance poetry developed by humanists within the forms of court theatrical drama and festival culture.