The “not ultimate” goal: the Defense of Comic Art in Giovan Battista Andreini’s Prologo in dialogo fra Momo e la Verità.

Abstract

The essay aims to offer a contribution to the study of the defense strategies adopted, in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century, by the actors of Commedia dell’Arte to legitimize their professional credibility on a cultural and academic level and the novelty of their compositional method (the culture of the actor and the scenic writing), thus overcoming the ethical and aesthetics accusations made by detractors and polemists. Specifically, the essay will focus on one of the most original and innovative protagonists of the Commedia dell’Arte: Giovan Battista Andreini. In the work examinated (the Prologo in dialogo fra Momo e la Verità, 1612), the development of the argomentation clearly transpires which, freeing comedy and laughter from morality, tries with particular acumen, to justify the exception and the autonomy of comic writing without leaving the perimeter of convention and ortodoxy, suporting the reasoning with an approach aimed at overturning in favor af Art the same accusations that questioned its legitimacy