By their very nature, sonnets allow quick glimpses into the lives of individuals and their surroundings. They can reveal what people loved, hated, idealized, and found ridiculous or grotesqueand Italian sonnets in particular exhibit a remarkably wide range of content and form. Rinaldina Russell, a scholar of Italian medieval and Renaissance literature and of women studies, leads you on a glorious exploration of medieval and Renaissance verse in Sonnet. Focusing strictly on Italy, she explains that sonnet writing was not the purview of a selected group of people. From the sonnets appearance in the first half of the thirteenth century through the Renaissance and on to the baroque age, writing sonnets was an activity people at all levels of society and of all intellectual and literary backgrounds practiced. She translates some of Italys most important, interesting, and underappreciated sonnets, conveying the meaning and structure of thought as faithfully as possible. Themes vary from political and military arguments to expressions of love and sexual needs, from atheistic and cynical views on mans nature and destiny, to a celebration of life and the divine. She also provides commentary to relate what translations do not convey, including the rhythmic and verbal effects of the Italian text and its topical allusions.
Confidential letters written to Galileo by his illegitimate daughter, revealing his personal propensities, the secrets of conventual life, and early seventeenth-century middle-class life in Italy.
By their very nature, sonnets allow quick glimpses into the lives of individuals and their surroundings. They can reveal what people loved, hated, idealized, and found ridiculous or grotesqueand Italian sonnets in particular exhibit a remarkably wide range of content and form. Rinaldina Russell, a scholar of Italian medieval and Renaissance literature and of women studies, leads you on a glorious exploration of medieval and Renaissance verse in Sonnet. Focusing strictly on Italy, she explains that sonnet writing was not the purview of a selected group of people. From the sonnets appearance in the first half of the thirteenth century through the Renaissance and on to the baroque age, writing sonnets was an activity people at all levels of society and of all intellectual and literary backgrounds practiced. She translates some of Italys most important, interesting, and underappreciated sonnets, conveying the meaning and structure of thought as faithfully as possible. Themes vary from political and military arguments to expressions of love and sexual needs, from atheistic and cynical views on mans nature and destiny, to a celebration of life and the divine. She also provides commentary to relate what translations do not convey, including the rhythmic and verbal effects of the Italian text and its topical allusions.
Over the last 20 years, there has been an increasing interest in feminist views of the Italian literary tradition. While feminist theory and methodology have been accepted by the academic community in the U.S., the situation is very different in Italy, where such work has been done largely outside the academy. Among nonspecialists, knowledge of feminist approaches to Italian literature, and even of the existence of Italian women writers, remains scant. This reference work, the first of its kind on Italian literature, is a companion volume for all who wish to investigate Italian literary culture and writings, both by women and by men, in light of feminist theory. Included are alphabetically arranged entries for authors, schools, movements, genres and forms, figures and types, and similar topics related to Italian literature from the Middle Ages to the present. Each entry is written by an expert contributor and summarizes feminist thought on the subject. Entries provide brief bibliographies, and the volume concludes with a selected, general bibliography of major studies. This volume covers eight centuries of Italian literature, from the Middle Ages to the present. Included are entries for major canonical male authors, such as Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, as well as for female writers such as Lucrezia Marinella and Gianna Manzini. These entries discuss how the authors have shaped the image of women in Italian literature and how feminist criticism has responded to their works. Entries are also provided for various schools and movements, such as deconstruction, Marxism, and new historicism; for genres and forms, such as the epic, devotional works, and misogynistic literature; for figures and types, such as the enchantress, the witch, and the shepherdess; and for numerous other topics. Each entry is written by an expert contributor, summarizes the relationship of the topic to feminist thought, and includes a brief bibliography. The volume closes with a selected general bibliography of major studies.
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