Description: Momus is the most ambitious literary creation of Leon Battista Alberti, the humanist-scientist-artist and "universal man" of the Italian Renaissance. In this dark comedy, written around 1450, Alberti charts the fortunes of his anti-hero Momus, god of criticism. This edition offers a new Latin text and the first full translation into English.
Brief description: Sarah Knight is Professor of Renaissance Literature at the University of Leicester.
Review Quotes: The sparkling translation, by Sarah Knight, frequently substitutes English colloquialisms for a more formal diction...The facing page's original text allows readers equipped with various levels of Latin--rusty or merely lightly oxidized--to follow the great success of the translator, who has produced a version at once faithful and spirited...There is a satirical violence of rhetoric here that goes beyond the familiar, and which makes Momus seem sometimes a premonitory text, looking forward not only to Rabelais and Erasmus, but to Swift and Beckett.--James Wood "The New Republic" (12/22/2003 12:00:00 AM)