Alfieri, Vittorio - Gustavo Costa (essay date 1992)
Gustavo Costa (essay date 1992)
SOURCE: “Achilles and Thersites in the Maelstrom of the French Revolution: The Sublime and the Ludicrous in Alfieri's Vita,” in Forum Italicum, Vol. 26, No. 1, Spring, 1992, pp. 28-45.
[In the following essay, Costa examines the French Revolution's effect on Alfieri's Vita. Costa considers the autobiographical work to be highly original, one that “produces striking anticipations of the Romantic humor.”]
Alfieri's autobiography (Vita), one of the most significant examples of modern Italian prose, marks a turning point in the intellectual and artistic development of the Piedmontese writer. The Vita is a unique masterpiece, in which Alfieri's creative genius reaches its zenith, while accomplishing a perfect fusion of the sublime and the ludicrous. Judged from this point of view, Alfieri's autobiography can be considered as the best Italian specimen of the Romantic humor,...
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