Vittorio Alfieri's Natural Sublime: The Physiology of Poetic Inspiration

Abstract

This essay examines Vittorio Alfieri's representation of the natural sublime in his autobiography, Vita scritta da esso (1804), and situates it in the context of the eighteenth-century philosophical discourse on the aesthetics of the sublime. A comparative analysis of its relation to Burke's physiological sublime, as opposed to Kant's rationalistic model, shows how Alfieri's description of the sublime is in line with the body-centered Burkean system. In fact, Alfieri's natural sublime is a corporeal experience that stresses the primacy of the senses at the expense of reason. Following Longinus, however, Alfieri poses the question of the sublime in terms of poetic inspiration and describes a physiology of creativity that involves both the bodily passions and the imagination. By situating Alfieri's sublime in a wider European context, the essay provides a conceptual framework to comprehend more fully Alfieri's ideas about the psychology of literary inspiration and the creative process. Finally, Alfieri's treatment of the natural sublime points to a non-Kantian line of development for the Romantic sublime and sheds light on the complex nature of late-eighteenth-century aesthetic theory.