Biblioteca Italiana – serie

Among Renaissance utopias, "The City of the Sun" is perhaps second in importance only to More's more famous work. There are striking similarities between Campanella's utopia and More's, but also striking differences which reflect both changed historical circumstances and the highly original nature of Campanella's thought. "La citta del sole" is one of many books written by Tommaso Campanella - philosopher, scientist, astrologer, and poet - while imprisoned in Naples for his part in rebellion against the Spanish and ecclesiastical authorities who ruled his native Calabria. This first faithful and complete English translation by Daniel J. Donno is presented opposite the critically established Itaion text, with essential explanatory notes and an introductory essay. Students of Italian culture, of the history of science, and of political, philosophical, and religious thought will welcome the publication of this authoritative edition of Campanella's best-known work.

This series is conceived as a library of bilingual editions of works chosen for their importance to Italian literature and to the international tradition of art and thought Italy has nurtured. In each volume an Italian text in an authoritative edition is paired with a new facing-page translation supplemented by explanatory notes and a selected bibliography. An introduction provides a historical and critical interpretation of the work. The scholars preparing these volumes hope through Biblioteca ltaliana to point a straight way to the Italian classics. GENERAL EDITOR: Louise George ClubbEDITORIAL BOARDPaul J. Alpers, Vittore BrancaGene Brucker, Fredi ChiappelliPhillip W. Damon, Robert M. DurlingGianfranco Folena, Lauro MartinesNicolas J. Perella

In Italy Angelo Beolco, called Ruzante, is recognized as the most original of the Italian Renaissance dramatists. However, his plays are hardly known in English, mainly because few translators have been able to take on the Pavano dialect Ruzante employed for the character he played. With Nancy Dersofi's vigorous and faithful translation of L'Anconitana, presented opposite the authoritative version of the Italian text, Ruzante's most successful play is now available to English-speaking audiences for the first time.

This new translation brings to English-speaking readers an intense and brooding work by the greatest poet of the Italian Renaissance, Ludovico Ariosto. Begun as a sequel to his epic masterpiece "Orlando Furioso" (1516), the unfinished "Cinque Canti" are a powerful poem in their own right. Tragic in tone, they depict the disintegration of the chivalric world of Charlemagne and his knights and give poetic expression to a sense of cultural, political, and religious crisis felt in Ariosto's Italy and in early sixteenth-century Europe more generally. David Quint's introduction freshly examines the literary sources and models of the "Cinque Canti" and discusses the cultural contexts and historical occasions of the poem. Printed with facing Italian text, this volume allows the modern reader to experience a work of Renaissance literature whose savage beauty still has the power to chill and fascinate.

The letters of Alessandra Strozzi provide a vivid and spirited portrayal of life in fifteenth-century Florence. Among the richest autobiographical materials to survive from the Italian Renaissance, the letters reveal a woman who fought stubbornly to preserve her family's property and position in adverse circumstances, and who was an acute observer of Medicean society. Her letters speak of political and social status, of the concept of honor, and of the harshness of life, including the plague and the loss of children. They are also a guide to Alessandra's inner life over a period of twenty-three years, revealing the pain and sorrow, and, more rarely, the joy and triumph, with which she responded to the events unfolding around her. This edition includes translations, in full or in part, of 35 of the 73 extant letters. The selections carry forward the story of Alessandra's life and illustrate the range of attitudes, concerns, and activities which were characteristic of their author.