New Fall Titles

This Fall Italica Press will publish three new titles in its Literature series: one in Medieval & Renaissance Texts (and Poetry in Translation) and two in our now expanding Renaissance & Modern Plays series.

Aiol: A Chanson de Geste records the exploits of the young knight, Aiol, as he reclaims by word and deed his father’s and mother’s unjustly stolen heritage. He gains the love of a Saracen princess who converts when she is convinced of the truth of the Christian god by Aiol’s warrior’s prowess. He then aids the French King Louis in ending a debilitating war led by rebellious vassals and (in an allusion to the Fourth Crusade) similarly helps Emperor Grasien, the king of Venice, to end his own war against an enemy to the East. Aiol’s deeds ultimately bring justice to the kingdom of France.
But the poem is far more than the tale itself. Aiol, like many other crusading and romance epics, artfully recreates both the Christian culture of the West and the Islamic culture of the Levant. 

Modern Edition and First English Translation by Sandra C. Malicote & A. Richard Hartman. Dual-Language Poetry. Introduction, notes, bibliography, and all 11 illustrations from the original Paris MS.

In Watching the Moon and Other Plays Patricia Gaborik presents an extensive introduction on the thought and legacy of Massimo Bontempelli (1878–1960) and complete translations of three of his major plays: Watching the Moon (1916), Stormcloud (1935) and Cinderella (1942). 
Bontempelli, poet, novelist, playwright and composer would become one of the literary giants of the 20th century. The father of magic realism in Italy, he was associated with the futurist avant-garde and then launched his own influential literary movement, Novecento. Editor and creator of various journals, he collaborated with some of the greatest writers of his day, from James Joyce to Luigi Pirandello. Bontempelli was a prominent fascist intellectual and remained a controversial writer. In 1953, however, he was awarded the Strega Prize, Italy’s most prestigious literary award.
1st English translation. Introduction, notes,  bibliography, illustrated.

In Six Characters in Search of an Author  Martha Witt and Mary Ann Frese Witt present, for the first time together, and many for the first time in English, the writings that formed the genesis of Luigi Pirandello’s  Six Characters in Search of an Author, along with a new translation of the theater masterpiece itself.
The interaction between characters demanding to “live” in writing and an author who rejects them would be developed in Pirandello’s 1911 story “The Tragedy of a Character.” In 1925, Pirandello conceived the idea of writing a novel about an author who rejects the characters who come to him begging to be put into a novel, and in a July 1917 letter to his son, he gives the novel a title: Sei personaggi in cerca d’autore: Romanzo da fare (Six Characters in Search of an Author: A Novel to Be Made). Martha Witt and Mary Ann Frese Witt provide all these materials for a complete appreciation of this masterwork.
New English translation. Introduction, notes, bibliography.