L’«Alfonseis» di Matteo Zuppardo e la figura di Giorgio Skanderbeg nel libro IV del poema

Abstract

This essay is dedicated to Matteo Zuppardo’s «Alfonseis», an epic-historical and eulogy poem in hexameters dedicated, around 1455-1457, to Alfonso the Magnanimous, king of Naples, on the occasion of his war expeditions against the Turks of Muhammad II. After trying to insert the composition of the «Alfonseis» within the epic-historical and encomiastic production of the Middle Ages and Humanism, a biographical sketch of the Sicilian author, poet and notary who lived towards the middle of the fifteenth century, is traced, followed by a general presentation of the poem, its content and its main sources. In particular, the examination focuses on book IV of the work, dedicated to the defeat of the Christian troops in Belgrade in July 1455, and to the depiction that Zuppardo proposes of the Albanian national hero Giorgio Castriota Skanderbeg: a depiction that, in propagandistic and eulogizing intentions of the writer, aims to reduce the importance that Skanderbeg had in the events, whereas, conversely, the role that the Sicilian troops, led by the leader Palermo of Palermo, had in them is greatly exalted by Zuppardo and directly linked to Alfonso the Magnanimous.