Aurelio Brandolini a Napoli. Le lingue della politica e la politica delle lingue nella corte di Ferrante d'Aragona

The article reconstructs the biographical events and literary production of the Florentine humanist Aurelio Brandolini during his time in Naples at Ferrante's court. It then reviews the vernacular translation of Pliny the Younger's Panegyric in Praise of Trajan and the oration De rei militaris litterarumque dignitate, affinitate et laudibus, both still unpublished, to reconstruct Brandolini's tendency to conform to Ferrante's cultural and linguistic guidelines and the literary tastes of the Neapolitan nobility in the second half of the 15th century. In particular, the translation of the Panegyric reveals Brandolini's tendency to adhere as much to the idea, already promoted by intellectuals gravitating around Alfonso the Magnanimous, of an 'imperial destiny' for the crown of Aragon, as to the proposal to give new dignity to native literary production in the vernacular, while the oration De rei militaris litterarumque dignitate, which originated as a prologue to the rhetoric course held in Capua by Brandolini himself in 1478-1479, responds to the specific needs of the Neapolitan nobility, oriented towards matching the valour of arms with the splendour of letters.