Poliziano

Angelo Ambrogini Poliziano (July 14, 1454 – September 24, 1494) was a Florentine classical scholar and poet, one of the revivers of Humanist Latin. He used his didactic poem Manto, written in the 1480s as an introduction to his lectures on Virgil.

Works and Influence

At the same time he was busy as a translator from the Greek. His versions of Epictetus, Hippocrates, Galen, Plutarch's Eroticus and Plato's Charmides delighted contemporaries by a certain fluency of Latin style and grace of manner which distinguished him as an original writer. Of these learned labors, the most universally acceptable to the public of that time were a series of discursive essays on philology and criticism, first published in 1489 under the title of Miscellanea. They had an immediate and lasting effect, encouraging the scholars of the next century and a half to throw their occasional discoveries in the field of scholarship into a form at once so attractive and so instructive. Poliziano was not, however, contented with these simply professorial and scholastic compositions. He devoted himself to the composition of Latin and Greek verses, which count among the best of those produced by men of modern times in rivalry with ancient authors.

Related Topics:
Epictetus - Hippocrates - Galen - Plutarch - Plato - Philology - Criticism - 1489

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His Latin and Greek works include:

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• The Manto, in which he pronounced a panegyric of Virgil;
• The Ambra, which contains a beautiful idyllic sketch of Tuscan landscape and a eulogy of Homer;
• The Rusticus, which celebrated the pleasures of country life in no frigid or scholastic spirit;
• The Nutricia, which was intended to serve as a general introduction to the study of ancient and modern poetrythese are the masterpieces of Poliziano in Latin verse, displaying an authenticity of inspiration, a sincerity of feeling, and a command of metrical resources which mark them out as original productions of poetic genius rather than as merely professorialism.

Exception may be taken to their style, when compared with the best work of the Augustan or even of the Silver age. But what renders them always noteworthy to the student of modern humanistic literature is that they are in no sense imitative or conventional, but that they convey the genuine thoughts and emotions of a born poet in Latin diction to suit the characteristics of the singer's temperament.

Related Topics:
Augustan - Diction

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While his principal Italian works are:

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• The stanzas called La Giostra, written upon Giuliano de Medicis' victory in a tournament;
• The Orfeo, a lyrical drama performed at Mantua with musical accompaniment;
• A collection of Tuscan songs, reproducing various forms of popular poetry distinguished by a roseate fluency.