El facto de scrivere: modelli, lingue e registri comunicativi nell'educazione epistolare alla corte sforzesca

Abstract

In Milan, during the second half of the XV century, the Sforza princes’ teachers chose the chancery letter over the humanistic one as a model for their pupils’ letter-writing education. This kind of littera could be written in Latin or vernacular Italian and most of the times saw both languages used in different sections. In fact, the chancery letter is characterized by a great fluidity that allowed the writer to choose among many composition and expressive possibilities that emerge from intrinsic and extrinsic elements. The article aims to show how these choices (kind of handwriting, mise en page, and most of all language) contribute to create a wide variety of communicative registers.

Keywords

• Sforza
• autography
• princes’ education in the XV century
• Latin and vernacular Italian