Récits de l’Hespérie L’identité « nationale » et les relations internationales dans l’épopée latine à la veille des guerres d’Italie

This paper takes the title of one of the most elaborate and prominent Latin epics of the 15th century, Basinio’s Hesperis, as a point of departure to present a case study in humanist appropriation of the classical semantics of place. Against the backdrop of Virgilian philology and antiquarianism, it seeks instances of Hesperia throughout Basinio’s epic and other samples of quattrocento Latin poetry and contrasts it with a different approach to classicizing spatiality in Strozzi’s Borsias.