Forme, lessico e topoi dell’epistolografia degli umanisti bolognesi fra primo e secondo Quattrocento

The paper investigates the different themes, forms and goals of the epistolary genre between XV and XVI centuries in the milieu of the Bolognese Humanism, which is deeply featured by his University. The cultural liveliness of Bologna in the first half of the XV Century is analyzed by reviewing some letters of the humanists teaching in the Bolognese University and following Valla’s eminence: Giovanni Tortelli, Niccolò Perotti, Lianoro Lianori and Niccolò Volpe, in whose letters images and settings taken from the metaphorical dictionary of humanistic philology often recur. In the milieu of the Bolognese Humanism, during the last two decades of the XV century, the best known professors established themselves: from one hand, they give the prefatory letters of the editions of their comments the role of a cultural, political and diplomatic manifesto on the importance of interpres (in the dauble meaning of translator and commentator); on the other hand, as Beroaldo did, they developed theoretical reflections on the letter as main form for the apprenticeship of the elegantia in writing and of the social behavior.