Imitatio, aemulatio, novitas nella poesia latina dell'Arcadia

Through a selection of Italian and Latin texts recited at the Bosco Parrasio in the first half of the eighteenth century, and other contemporary sources in various ways pertaining to Arcadia, the article recovers some passages relating to the readings of ancient auctores by the Latin poets of Arcadia, showing how the imitatio – aemulatio dualism, of Renaissance origin, continued to operate even in the Latin poetry written for Arcadian meetings (the ragunanze). Since the poetry composed for Bosco Parrasio, also in Latin, was intended for oral use, through recitation, a third category emerges, that of novitas, which is explicitly proposed in various texts, but with different definitions and purposes from time to time: some are recovered and analyzed, the first findings of a vast field of investigation, which is still to be explored.