Giovanni Pontano hears the street soundscape of Naples

Giovanni Pontano’s dialogue Antonius can be read almost as a thick description of the soundscape of a Neapolitan street in the mid- to late-15th century, complete with public announcements, street performers, domestic arguments, workers’ banter, charms and spells, processions, errand boys, bells, clocks, cockerels, and much more. Antonius was first printed in 1491, and then in a 1501 Opera edition alongside another dialogue, Charon, Pontano’s treatises De fortitudine, De principe and De obedientia, and his treatises on the “social virtues,” De liberalitate, De benificentia, De magnificentia, De splendore, and De conviventia. Using the street soundscape of Antonius as a framework, this essay interleaves both sonic reportage and reflections on the ethics and purpose of sound drawn from the other works included in the 1501 edition, to construct a rich and surprisingly detailed impression of the urban soundscape as it struck Pontano, or at least as he represented it in a literary context.