La parodia delle scene tipiche nella Batrachomyomachia e la sua imitatio nel Rinascimento

The present work analyzes the relation between Batrachomyomachia and zooepic poems of Italian Humanism and Renaissance. The Batrachomyomachia was used in schools as an educational text in the Byzantine period and was the first Greek literary text to be printed in Italy: for these reasons it was a well-known work among humanists, although most of them read the poem in a Latin translation instead of the original Greek text. In the Batrachomyomachia parody is achieved in particular through the juxtaposition of animal characters and presence of Homeric type-scenes. The se- lected type-scenes parodied by the author of the Batrachomyomachia are all present in the zooepic works: aristeia, assembly, arming, catalogues and battles. The first part of the paper is focused on the way in which the type-scenes are parodied in the Pseudo- Homeric poem. The second part is focused on the presence of the same type-scene in the Italian zooepic of the Sixteenth century: the works taken into consideration are the Croacus of Elisio Calenzio, the Moschaea of Teofilo Folengo and the anonymous poem La gran battaglia de li gatti e de li sorzi. The intention of this comparative analysis is to highlight that the Batrachomyomachia was the archetype of the zooepic genre: it was found that some elements contained in the Batrachomyomachia were reused by erudite humanists and later became canonical elements in the zooepic poems.