Prime ricognizioni sul corpus dei deperdita sofoclei nell’opera di Angelo Poliziano

This paper focuses on the quotations from the corpus of fragments attributed to the Athenian dramatist Sophocles, which are found in various works of the Italian humanist Angelo Poliziano (1454-1494), including the “Miscellaneorum centuriae” and some of his “Commentaries” on classical authors. Poliziano’s approach to literary fragments, as shown in the case of Sophocles, seems to comply with the humanist’s project of collecting a vast encyclopaedia on the ancient world, to which even literary fragments could contribute: in spite of their incompleteness, fragments could assist the learned Poliziano in elucidating passages from other ancient authors, illustrating the meaning of realia related to the ancient world, or shedding light on mythical accounts, thus providing humanistic scholarship on antiquity with a valuable means of research.