Biography

Alessandro Polcri (Ph.D. in Italian Literature, Yale University, 2004) is an Associate Professor at Fordham University, New York. His research focuses on the literature of the 15th-16th centuries (in particular in Florence and Ferrara) and on contemporary Italian Poetry. His publications include Luigi Pulci e la chimera. Studi sull’allegoria nel "Morgante" (2010) and studies on Teofilo Folengo, Matteo Maria Boiardo, Luigi Pulci, Marsilio Ficino, Cosimo de' Medici, Martino Filetico. He has contributed numerous entries to the Compendium Auctorum Latinorum Medii Aevi, co-edited Rossella Bessi's Umanesimo Volgare (2004), and recently co-edited the volume “Encyclopaedia Mundi”. Studi di Letteratura Italiana in onore di Giuseppe Mazzotta (2013).

Project Summary

This project studies the little-known debate on Magnificence that became extremely lively in Florence between 1440-1464, so much that it represented a delicate question capable of weakening Medicean power. Cosimo de' Medici employed a group of defenders who wrote philosophical-political texts about his Magnificence and 'excessive virtues', addressing the problem of the correct use of his wealth, deemed essential to the well-being of the city.