Raccontare la sconfitta: la battaglia di Sarno nel De bello Neapolitano di Giovanni Pontano (7 luglio 1460)

In order to make eternal the account of the Sarno defeat, narrated in the De bello Neapolitano, the humanist Giovanni Pontano shapes it according to the codes of the classical historiography. The way Pontano classically recasts a tactically and politically important event of the present history corresponds to the system used by the contemporary humanistic historiography. Contemporary facts are interpreted by the humanist through two different filters. On one hand, Pontano macroscopically transfigures contemporary events through narrative and stylistic macrostructures taken from the classical historiography, and this recasting of historical works will be theorized by Pontano himself many years later in his dialogue Actius. On the other, the humanist uses an allusive re-use of expressions and stylistic features belonging to the ancient historiography, which can be appreciated by the learned readers of his work. The result represents a precious texture, where the events of chronicle are reshaped through an allusive dialogue with the classic sources. But Pontano’s historical narrative isn’t free of remarkable ideological implications that characterize this episode with marked propaganda tones.