Albertino Mussato

Albertino Mussato (1261 – 31 May 1329) was an Early Renaissance Italian statesman, poet, historian and dramatist credited with providing an impetus to the revival of literary Latin.

A native of Padua, a major city in the northern Veneto region, Mussato was a chronicler of his times, whose 1315 Latin verse play Ecerinis^[1], based on the tyrannical career of Ezzelino III da Romano, was the first secular tragedy written since Roman times, and so is considered the first Italian tragedy identifiable as a Renaissance work.^[2] Its literary and political qualities earned Albertino a crown as Poet Laureate, a revival of an antique custom, partly at the prompting of Rolando della Piazzola.^[3]

In addition to his prolific writings, he is also remembered in contemporary accounts as a champion of poetry which he defended in a 1317 polemical exchange of letters with a Dominican friar, Giovannino of Mantua.^[4]

Albertino Mussato died in Chioggia in the year of his 68th birthday.

Notes

1. ^ Also rendered Eccerinus
2. ^ Neoclassic Critics
3. ^ Robert Weiss, The Renaissance Discovery of Classical Antiquity 1973:20.
4. ^ Patricia Zupan, "Dante's Ulysses: Toward Recovering A Primordial Language"

References

• Kelly, Henry Ansgar (1993). Ideas and Forms of Tragedy from Aristotle to the Middle Ages, pp. 135–44. Cambridge University Press.

External links

• Albertino Mussato biographical entry (original Italian-language text literally translated into English)

Persondata
Name	Mussato, Albertino
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Short description
Date of birth	1261
Place of birth
Date of death	31 May 1329
Place of death