Anonimo Padovano, L'Entrée d'Espagne

The Entrée d'Espagne, written by an anonymous author from Padua in the first half of the fourteenth century, is the most important work of Franco-Italian literature. The poem, unfortunately incomplete (we have approximately 16000 verses), came to us thanks to a single manuscript very elegant - numerous and valuable are the miniatures - belonged to the library of the Gonzaga. The historical importance of the Entrée d'Espagne in the context of Italian chivalric literature had already been highlighted by Antoine Thomas, who made an excellent critical edition in 1913: this complete translation, the first in a modern language, makes such a complex and difficult text, hitherto intended for a few specialists, more widely accessible. The translation work also gave the two curators the opportunity to reflect on the critical text, in a continuous dialogue with the manuscript; this allowed them to discuss in several places the text of the poem established by Thomas, and to suggest, in the commentary notes, new solutions.