The command of time in Leon Battista Alberti’s "Momus", "I Libri della Famiglia", and "Intercenales"

  • Mariana Sverlij Universidad de Buenos Aires
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5209/rev_CFIT.2013.v20.44178
Keywords: time, fortune, reason, absurd, Alberti

Abstract

The large and heterogeneous work of Leon Battista Alberti (1402 - 1472) is based on two confronted visions of the world: the “paradigm of the absurd” and the “paradigm of the reason”. Both come from the same recognition of reality: the precarious character of the human existence, submitted by the swings of fortune and by the implacable power of fate. Faced to this situation, I libri della Famiglia, Momus and the Intercenales elaborate different vital answers, which represent the fluctuation of Alberti’s thought between the rational and the irrational, the chaos of the fortune and the shape that the human being tries to give his world, expressed as the attempt of building a human time. This attempt is different if it deals with the “paradigm of the absurd” or with the “paradigm of the reason”: while in the former the man builds his own time in order to escape from the precariousness of the existence, confirming the absurd character of life, in the latter human appropriation of the time allows the rising of a virtuous reason.

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Published
2014-01-28
How to Cite
Sverlij M. (2014). The command of time in Leon Battista Alberti’s "Momus", "I Libri della Famiglia", and "Intercenales". Cuadernos de Filología Italiana, 20, 153-172. https://doi.org/10.5209/rev_CFIT.2013.v20.44178
Issue
Vol. 20 (2013)
Section
Literary and Cultural Studies

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