"Mercurio a teatro. Cultura testuale e poetica del comico tra Medioevo e Umanesimo" has a twofold structure: its first section appeals directly to the self-image of humanism as a painstaking recovery of the pieces of tradition, and it argues for a material and codicological consideration of such rearrangement (chapters 1 and 3). The strategy of 'comedy' takes part in a larger interference between textual transcription and literary genre, and the purpose is to trace the genealogy of different literary forms, the pastoral (chapters 2 and 4), the theater (chapter 3), and the silva (chapter 3), from classical antiquity to the Renaissance.

The second section culminates in a new critical edition of the lesser known Apologi, written by Leon Battista Alberti in 1437 (chapter 6). This edition stands as a proof both of the newly established description of Quattrocento comedy and of the necessity to open the Lachmannian method of recensio to a broader spectrum of analysis. Alberti's edition is presented with a commentary and framed by a study of the dedicatory epistle (chapter 5), seen as a centerpiece for the larger humanistic issue of brevity and festivity.