Frammenti di letture umanistiche ed esegesi dimenticate di Aristofane

Abstract

Humanist exegesis of Aristophanes’ plays has not yet been illuminated in the Aristophanic studies. Fragments of humanistic readings of the Aristophanic corpus still lie unedited and unexplored in some of the recent manuscripts of Greek Comedy. In this essay, I shall examine a number of marginal and interlinear glosses, almost unknown until now, left in a fifteenth-century manuscript – Prag. VIII H 36 – by a humanist Latin reader of Aristophanes’ Plutus. This hitherto neglected codex is especially interesting because of its significance for the reception and interpretation of Ancient Comedy during the Renaissance age. The present study will describe and document the dissemination and impact of the Aristophanic comedies upon the Latin-reading public of Renaissance Italy. The analysis of glosses preserved by humanistic witnesses will shed light on the history of the revival of Aristophanes and the story of how the writings of the ancient playwright were received and interpreted, some 1800 years after they were written, in an alien language and culture.