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This doctoral thesis may be read in two different ways: on the one hand it aims at breaking the ground on Petrarch's and Boccaccio's reading of certain authors such as Dante, Homer and other Classics, through a systematic search for borrowings and interdiscursive themes often proving to be real intertexts (never investigated as such before), consciously or unconsciously exploited in several works ofPetrarch (Latin poetic and prose letters, BllColicll11l carmen, De vita solitaria, Trillinphi, RVF), and Boccaccio (Decameron, some early works. of the Neapolitan period, Genea/ogie deOrll11l gentili1l11l). On the other hand, I hope this work will prove to be of some use for a better understanding of the main literary techniques of imitatio in the Italian Trecento as a whole. Besides a micro-diachronic structure, consisting of Petrarch, Boccaccio and those authors who have been more frequently used by them, I also tried to shape my research on a macro-diachronic structure, intended to show under which circumstances (cultural, social, literary, psychological) Petrarch's and Boccaccio's prose and poetry witnessed a change in the imitative technique applied to the models, namely Dante for Petrarch and the Classics for Boccaccio. Whilst Petrarch developed a competitive approach to his model, starting from absorption and sharing of style and values and ending with emulation superseding that style and those values in the pursuit of poetic fame; Boccaccio, eminently concentrating on literary imitation, in the end overcame his earlier juxtapositional technique in favour of a complete and mature ars contaminandi. This changing attitude of the two authors has been documented through the analysis of a limited number of works of Petrarch and Boccaccio, showing to what extent their readings influenced their writings through the contrivance of two personal techniques of imitatio; emu/atio and ars contaminandi. Through a comparative reading of the texts, I conduct an intertextual (and interdiscursive) analysis of themes, vocabulary and style of the quoted passages, systematically pointing out and explaining all significant references to classical and medieval authors.

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The aim of this research is to propose a new, culturally contextualized image of Matteo Bandello through the concurrent analysis of his main two works, Le quattro parti de le novelle and Alcuni fragmenti de le rime, and with close reference to his less well known productions both in Italian and in Latin so as to stress their connections in the light of Bandello's narrative development. A correct reading of the narrative elements in the Rime helps us to rethink the general view of this canzoniere, which has often been marginalized by critics, and to show the links with the Novelle, which are analysed both on a structural level - the epistles - and on a narrative level - the tales. In these two works Bandello entwined the fictional plot and the historical events of that period in order to communicate to the readers his experience as both courtier and author. At the heart of his works there is the Renaissance conception of varietas, which is interpreted in an original way thanks to a new idea of plurality and fragmentation. Matteo Bandello was able to unify truth and variety, thematic verisimilitude and structural verisimilitude. Rime and Novelle, by virtue of an alternation of history and autobiography, are in fact both characterized by a rediscovery of ancient values and by an autonomous creation of a new identity. The links of these works of Bandello with the past are here connected with a detailed comparison with the features of Bandello's contemporary narrative prose. The thesis thus proposes to see Matteo Bandello as a European intellectual in terms of his impact, biography and success. Bandello's cultural legacy allows the modern reader to rediscover the origins and the roots of a shared idea about story- telling.

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