Luigi Pulci (Italian pronunciation:[luˈiːdʒiˈpultʃi]; 15 August 1432 – 11 November 1484) was an Italiandiplomat andpoet best known for hisMorgante, an epic andparodistic poem about a giant who is converted toChristianity byOrlando and follows the knight in many adventures.
Pulci was born inFlorence. His patrons were theMedicis, especially Lucrezia andLorenzo Medici, who often sent Pulci on diplomatic missions. Even so, sometime around 1470 Pulci needed more money and went into the service ofRoberto Sanseverino d'Aragona, a northerncondottiere. In 1478 (after the assassination of Lorenzo's brotherGiuliano during thePazzi Conspiracy), Pulci, riding on the coattails of the city's current anti-clericalism, wrote a poem dedicated toLucrezia Tornabuoni that fulminated againstPope Sixtus IV's Rome.[1][2]
His brotherLuca Pulci (1431–1470) was also a writer. His brother Luca's works, all in the Italian language, includePistole,Driadeo d'amore, andCyriffo Calvaneo.
The poemMorgante is composed of 28cantari (chapters) written inottava rima. The subject was loosely derived from theCarolingian epic tradition, but Pulci drew many characters and motives also from the popular poems usually sung by storytellers in Florence'spiazzas and developed a rich series of comic and parodistic episodes.[3] The work was commissioned byLucrezia Tornabuoni, the mother of Lorenzo and Giuliano Medici.[4] 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 way of thinking and living, and free imagination are expressed in a language based upon the Florentinedialect and extends from criminalargot to literary or scientific Latin. This language is very far from the earlyRenaissanceclassicistic model, proposed byPoliziano in those same years in the Medicis' court.[3]
