Monday, August 29, 2011

New Summer Titles from Italica Press

It’s been a very busy summer here at Italica Press. As September approaches we’re about to publish four new titles, three in our Medieval & Renaissance series, and one new work in Modern Italian Fiction.

The medieval and Renaissance works include a new edition of Guido A. Guarino’s translation of Giovanni Boccaccio’s On Famous Women, first pubished in 1963. This was based on the edition of Mathias Apiarius, printed in Bern in 1539. This new edition includes the original woodcut illustrations of the 1539 Apiarius edition, a new bibliographical note and a select bibliography that brings research on this work up to date.

The second medieval text is a new verse translation, by Michael A.H. Newth, of The Song of Roland. Newth’s new edition — the first in fifty years to preserve the full poetic diction of the medieval composition — recaptures the form, feel and flow of the original work in performance by restoring the genre’s “verbal music” to the Song of Roland. This new translation will also soon be available in a performance edition and as a complete audio book from Audible.com and other audio-book distributors.

Our third medieval and Renaissance offering this season is a new dual-language edition of Torquato Tasso’s Love Poems for Lucrezia Bendidio, translated and edited by Max Wickert, whose English verse translation of Tasso’s The Liberation of Jerusalem has already become a critically acclaimed standard. This follows up on Italica’s verse translation of Tasso’s Aminta.

Finally, we also present the first English translation, by Martha King, of Gianna Manzini’s Full-Length Portrait  (Ritratto in piedi), the prize-winning best-seller by one of Italy’s most important literary voices. It follows Italica’s publication of King’s translation of Manzini’s Game Plan for a Novel (Lettera all’editore). 

All these works are available in hardcover, paperback and in Kindle editions at very reasonable prices through your local bookseller and online stores, including Amazon.com.