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, which Jean Paul Richter viewed as the reverse of the sublime in his School for Aesthetics.¹ As I...