L’art du poète et la folie des grammairiens La défense de Virgile dans le dialogue Antonius de Giovanni Pontano

This study focuses on a prose section of Pontano’s 1491 dialogue Antonius (a homage to Antonio Beccadelli) dedicated to the grammarians’ attacks against poets and prose-writers, classics included, and particularly focuses on Elisio Calenzio’s defence of Virgilian poetry against Favorinus of Arles (known to Gellius) and Macrobius, thus highlighting some aspects of Pontano’s poetics on the poet’s freedom and on imitation as well as on literary criticism, that only poets may exercise.