Alfieri tra illuminismo e romanticismo

Alfieri is the Italian writer reflecting more than any other the tensions and conflicts marking the transition from the Enlightenment to Romanticism. The complex, often contradictory coexistence of a still active legacy of the Enlightenment together with the tensions characterizing the imminence of Romanticism is manifested with great emphasis in Alfieri’s two treatises, Della tirannide and Del Principe e delle lettere, both hovering between the conceptual foundations of the Enlightenment and a poetics of the sublime and ‘forte sentire’, characterized by fully romantic traits such as a religion of freedom, Titanism, individualism, and patriotism