Luigi Pulci (; 15 August 1432 – 11 November 1484) was an Italian
diplomat
A diplomat (from ; romanization, romanized ''diploma'') is a person appointed by a state (polity), state, International organization, intergovernmental, or Non-governmental organization, nongovernmental institution to conduct diplomacy with one ...
and
poet
A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator (thought, thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral t ...
best known for his ''
Morgante'', an epic and
parodistic poem about a giant who is converted to
Christianity
Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion, which states that Jesus in Christianity, Jesus is the Son of God (Christianity), Son of God and Resurrection of Jesus, rose from the dead after his Crucifixion of Jesus, crucifixion, whose ...
by
Orlando and follows the knight in many adventures.
Life
Pulci was born in
Florence
Florence ( ; ) is the capital city of the Italy, Italian region of Tuscany. It is also the most populated city in Tuscany, with 362,353 inhabitants, and 989,460 in Metropolitan City of Florence, its metropolitan province as of 2025.
Florence ...
. His patrons were the
Medicis, especially Lucrezia and
Lorenzo Medici, who often sent Pulci on diplomatic missions. Even so, sometime around 1470 Pulci needed more money and went into the service of
Roberto Sanseverino d'Aragona, a northern ''
condottiere''. In 1478 (after the assassination of Lorenzo's brother
Giuliano during the
Pazzi Conspiracy), Pulci, riding on the coattails of the city's current anti-clericalism, wrote a poem dedicated to
Lucrezia Tornabuoni that fulminated against
Pope Sixtus IV's Rome.
His brother
Luca Pulci (1431–1470) was also a writer. His brother Luca's works, all in the Italian language, include ''Pistole'', ''Driadeo d'amore'', and ''Cyriffo Calvaneo''.
''Morgante''
The poem ''Morgante'' is composed of 28 ''cantari'' (chapters) written in
ottava rima. The subject was loosely derived from the
Carolingian epic tradition, but Pulci drew many characters and motives also from the popular poems usually sung by storytellers in Florence's
piazzas and developed a rich series of comic and parodistic episodes.
The work was commissioned by
Lucrezia Tornabuoni, the mother of Lorenzo and Giuliano Medici. The poem in progress was read at the Medicis' court, where the public appreciated the funny characters, partly new, partly recreated from the epic tradition. Popular Florentine humour,
bourgeois
The bourgeoisie ( , ) are a class of business owners, merchants and wealthy people, in general, which emerged in the Late Middle Ages, originally as a "middle class" between the peasantry and Aristocracy (class), aristocracy. They are tradition ...
way of thinking and living, and free imagination are expressed in a language based upon the Florentine
dialect
A dialect is a Variety (linguistics), variety of language spoken by a particular group of people. This may include dominant and standard language, standardized varieties as well as Vernacular language, vernacular, unwritten, or non-standardize ...
and extends from criminal
argot
A cant is the jargon or language of a group, often employed to exclude or mislead people outside the group.McArthur, T. (ed.) ''The Oxford Companion to the English Language'' (1992) Oxford University Press It may also be called a cryptolect, argo ...
to literary or scientific Latin. This language is very far from the early
Renaissance
The Renaissance ( , ) is a Periodization, period of history and a European cultural movement covering the 15th and 16th centuries. It marked the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and was characterized by an effort to revive and sur ...
classicistic model, proposed by
Poliziano in those same years in the Medicis' court.
[ Baldi, Giusso, Razetti, Zaccaria, ''Dal testo alla storia. Dalla storia al testo'', vol. 1b, Paravia, Torino, 1999]
See also
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Torre dei Pulci
References
Sources
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External links
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Luigi Pulci / Links and some notes''Strabotti de Luigi Pulci Fiorentino''From the Collections at the
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress (LOC) is a research library in Washington, D.C., serving as the library and research service for the United States Congress and the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It also administers Copyright law o ...
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Pulci, Luigi
1432 births
1484 deaths
15th-century people from the Republic of Florence
Italian poets
Italian male poets
Writers from Florence
Diplomats from Florence