Luca Matranga e il suo tempo storico

This volume collects the proceedings of the XXX International Conference of Albanology organized by the Department of Cultures and Society and held on 5 and 6 May 2019 in Palermo and in the two Sicilian Albanian communities of Piana degli Albanesi and Santa Cristina Gela. The meeting was wanted both to inaugurate the Departmental Laboratory of Albanology on the occasion of the fourth centenary of the death of the author of the first book in Arbëresh, Luca Matranga (18 January 1569 - 6 May 1619), and to deepen the knowledge of a complex period of the cultural history of the Albanians, both of those who for centuries settled in southern Italy and of the others who reside on the eastern shores of the Adriatic. The sixteenth century, in fact, is rightly considered by scholars to be a forerunner of the most ancient phase of the Albanian script and a precursor of the birth of a true and proper literature reflected in the course of the following centuries, in particular of the eighteenth century, during which Sicily itself will be transformed. in the driving force of the first Albanian cultural and literary rilindja ("rebirth").