«Et se Conversan fosse un’altra Troya»: la cattura di Andrea Matteo Acquaviva e l’assedio di Conversano in un inedito poema in ottava rima

Southern Italy and the war between the French and the Spanish for the conquest of the Kingdom of Naples play a marginal role in the spread of new literary genres (cantari and lamenti ) representing the early Italian Wars. By adopting the unknown perspective of a poem in ottava rima, most prob- ably written by an eyewitness of the conflict belonging to Del Balzo family, the paper sheds light on two episodes from the war: the duel and the capture of Andrea Matteo III Acquaviva, and the siege of the city of Conversano. First, it aims to emphasize the interference with other literary traditions (chivalric poem, cantari ) in the original account of the duel within the duke’s myth-building process. Then, the analysis moves on to reflect on the last act of the French resistance in Conversano, by showing how the poem repre- sents an exceptional field for reconstructing the voices and actors expressing political opinion on the war from below, in particular on the complex dy- namics of loyalty and political belonging at the fall of Aragonese Kingdom