Loise de Rosa - Il bugiardo napoletano - 1967

The volume “The Neapolitan Liar” represents one of the most vivid and fascinating testimonies of vulgar literature and minor historiography of the 15th century, containing the memoirs and chronicles of Loise De Rosa, a court servant who lived between about 1385 and 1475. The work, here presented in the edition curated by Ludovico Greco in 1967, is not a novel in the modern sense, but a heterogeneous collection of personal memories, lists of monuments, descriptions of ceremonies, and anecdotes linked to daily life at the Aragonese court of Naples, where the author served as master of the house and usher under several rulers, from Ladislaus of Durazzo to Ferdinand of Aragon. The title, attributed by later criticism to emphasize the author’s tendency toward hyperbole, exaggeration, and self-celebration, reflects the personality of a man who, having reached the venerable age of eighty, decides to put in writing everything he has seen and heard, mixing objective historical data with fantastic inventions and personal boasts. Written in an archaic Neapolitan that is extremely dynamic, rich in idiomatic expressions and far from the formalities of the literary Tuscan language of the time, the text is ideally divided into three sections: a survey of the beauties and excellences of Naples, a list of the kings and queens who sat on the throne with the related major events, and finally a more intimate part devoted to his own professional career and the privileges enjoyed at court. From a historical and anthropological point of view, the work is priceless because it offers a unique glimpse into the material culture of the Quattrocento, detailing banquets, clothing, servile hierarchies, and urban transformations of the city, all filtered through the proud gaze of a commoner who managed to ascend the social ranks until becoming a privileged witness to the great events of his time. This 1967 edition fits into the current of critical rediscovery of De Rosa, valuing the text not only as a linguistic document for the study of the ancient dialect but as a true monument of Neapolitan collective memory, capable of restoring the authentic and playful voice of a Naples in transition between the Angevin and the Aragonese periods."} }n/a