Italian Literature

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  Three Melodramas by Pietro Metastasio

  Pietro Antonio Domenico Trapassi (1698–1782) was an Italian poet and librettist, considered the most important writer of opera seria libretti. In this volume, Pietro Metastasio presents new translations of Dido Abandoned, Demetrius, and The Olympiad that stay close to the original form and wording. Featuring an introduction that highlights the playwright's life and significant innovations in dramatic technique as well as a short bibliography, Fucilla’s translations will be of interest not only to literary scholars, but also to those concerned with the history of music.

  Joseph G. Fucilla is professor emeritus of Spanish and Italian at Northwestern University. He holds ...Read More

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  Woman Earthly and Divine in the Comedy of Dante

  This study examines all the characterizations of the female personality in the Divine Comedy, including representations of things traditionally categorized as feminine. Marianne Shapiro treats different traditional feminine roles such as wife, lover, and mother, and places Beatrice in the latter group.

  The problem of woman is studied within the general context of medieval literature. Shapiro’s conclusions center largely upon Dante’s adherence to a generally misogynistic tradition. While in his earlier works his concept of woman was as a comprehensive whole encompassing good and evil, in the Comedy polarities are established and affirmed.

  Marianne Shapiro is associate professor of Italian ...Read More

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  Giraldi Cinthio on Romances

  Giraldi Cinthio’s Discorso intorno al comporre dei romanzi, here translated into English for the first time, was one of the most important critical works of the Renaissance. Written as a defense of Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, Giraldi’s discourse is an inquiry both into the nature of poetry and into the characteristics of the “heroic” or epic genre, in which some of the world’s richest poems fall.

  Henry L. Snuggs introduces this translation with an incisive interpretation of Giraldi’s critical theory. Giraldi was the first, Snuggs states, to make a significant plea in sixteenth-century criticism for the poetry of that (and our) ...Read More

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  Leopardi and the Theory of Poetry

  In this first detailed and comprehensive account of Leopardi's theory of poetry, G. Singh assesses both the literary and critical attainments of a poet whose eminence ranks him with Dante and Petrarch. Singh's analysis, which employs extensive reference to Leopardi’s work in order to illustrate the author’s own comments, sets forth Leopardi’s views on the larger questions of tradition, inspiration, and the imagination in poetry. Later chapters are concerned with the more specific matters of the poetic image, style, and language.

  G. Singh is a poet, critic, and academic. He is the author of various criticisms of Swinburne, Pound, Eliot, ...Read More