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Post by Dante di Pietro on Sept 20, 2020 5:47:48 GMT -5
To hear Alfieri tell it, he revolutionized fencing with the guardia mista, or mixed guard. Current interpretations based on his description consider this to be a bastard terza/quarta with a few particularities, so odds are there's nothing there you haven't seen before out in the list field. Alfieri is a couple of decades beyond the SCA time period, but is very consistent with the other Italian authors that came before him. He does, however, have some nice features that would recommend him as an author. 1) The writing is more clear than Capoferro, and more thorough than Giganti. 2) Plates are process-oriented and broken down into steps well. 3) Lettered lines show multiple lines of attack available from a position, making it very clear where your blade should be. The downside: there are two translations that both came out at the same time, and they don't quite always match. Additionally, they don't misalign in nonsensical ways and it becomes debatable which is correct-- and because Alfieri is less clear about starting positions (unlike Capoferro, where every plate explicitly identifies the guards that start each sequence), some of those discrepancies require advanced reverse engineering to figure out with confidence. That doesn't detract in a meaningful sense from the quality of the manual. It's just one of those hiccoughs that researchers have to contend with sometimes. Alfieri, by Leoni Alfieri, by Terminiello, Marshall, and Stewart
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