I Tatti Renaissance Library

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I TATTI RENAISSANCE LIBRARY

 

Since 2001, the I Tatti Renaissance Library has been the only series to make the major literary, historical, philosophical, and scientific works of the Italian Renaissance written in Latin available to a broad readership. Each volume provides a reliable Latin text together with an accurate, readable English translation on facing pages, accompanied by an editor’s introduction, notes on the text, brief bibliography, and index. Presenting current scholarship in an attractive and convenient format, The I Tatti Renaissance Library aims to facilitate access to this essential literature for both students and scholars in a wide variety of disciplines as well as to general readers.

The series’ General Editor is Professor James Hankins at Harvard University, to whom all editorial question should be directed. For further information on the series, click hereVolumes can be bought through Harvard University Press.

Dinner Pieces, Volume 2
Alberti, Leon Battista. 2024. Dinner Pieces, Volume 2. Leon Battista Alberti. Publisher's Version Abstract

An innovative collection of comedic stories by the original “Renaissance man.”

Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472) was among the most famous figures of the Italian Renaissance. His extraordinary range of abilities as a writer, architect, art theorist, and scientist made him the original model for the many-sided “Renaissance man.”

A collection of stories meant to be read while dining and drinking, the Dinner Pieces, or Intercenales, are one of Alberti’s most innovative and experimental works, mixing literary genres and styles of prose composition adapted from both Greek and Latin models. They cover a wide range of topics, from moral philosophy, politics, and religion to the arts, money-making, love and friendship, and the study of the humanities. The Dinner Pieces offer satiric commentary on the cultural illusions and moral myths of Alberti’s day. They cut through the absurdity of human existence with the blade of wit and laughter and constitute an important monument in the history of comic writing.

This English translation by David Marsh is based on the authoritative Latin text of Roberto Cardini, accompanied by ample notes.

Dinner Pieces, Volume 1
Alberti, Leon Battista. 2024. Dinner Pieces, Volume 1. Harvard University Press. Publisher's Version Abstract

An innovative collection of comedic stories by the original “Renaissance man.”

Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472) was among the most famous figures of the Italian Renaissance. His extraordinary range of abilities as a writer, architect, art theorist, and scientist made him the original model for the many-sided “Renaissance man.”

A collection of stories meant to be read while dining and drinking, the Dinner Pieces, or Intercenales, are one of Alberti’s most innovative and experimental works, mixing literary genres and styles of prose composition adapted from both Greek and Latin models. They cover a wide range of topics, from moral philosophy, politics, and religion to the arts, money-making, love and friendship, and the study of the humanities. The Dinner Pieces offer satiric commentary on the cultural illusions and moral myths of Alberti’s day. They cut through the absurdity of human existence with the blade of wit and laughter and constitute an important monument in the history of comic writing.

This English translation by David Marsh is based on the authoritative Latin text of Roberto Cardini, accompanied by ample notes.

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