One of the treasures in the James Ford Bell collection at the University of Minnesota is Cristoforo Buondelmonti’s Description of the Aegean and Other Islands. Evelyn Edson presents a facsimile edition of the entire manuscript, with introduction, complete transcription, English translation, notes, bibliography and index. We present this book in full color at 8.5 x 11 inches, nearly the full size of the Bell manuscript.
For the first time in English we present Luigi Malerba’s novel within a novel, Roman Ghosts (Fantasmi Romani), translated by Miriam Aloisio and Michael Subialka. Malerba’s drama of a loosely married professional couple captures an entire microcosm of modern Rome, a world that is deceptively calm and only apparently in order. As Rebecca West writes in her introduction to this volume, “To enter [Malerba’s world] in this fine translation is to discover just how engaging an author Luigi Malerba is.”
We continue our presentation of Torquato Tasso’s works with Rinaldo, translated and edited by Max Wickert. It combines romantic epic — a form popularized by Italian masters like Boiardo and Ariosto — with the classical influences from Virgil and Aristotle. Despite Tasso’s youth, his Rinaldo was a remarkably original achievement in terms of style, organization and plot. Italica Press has also published Tasso’s Aminta and his Love Poems for Lucrezia Bendidio.
This January saw the publication of the new dual-language edition of Annibal Caro’s The Scruffy Scoundrels by Donald Beecher & Massimo Ciavolella. Written in 1543, this remains a masterpiece of humanist playwriting in which drama both imitates and helps construct life. Rome itself is the main character in Caro’s comedy, as the new city of Paul III both unleashes and ultimately civilizes a wild assortment of comic types and plots.
Luigi Pirandello was also a master poet, and George Hochfield’s new dual-language edition of Luigi Pirandello’s Selected Poems presents for the first time a selection from the entire range of Pirandello’s poetic output. Hochfield’s translation offers a sensitive and wise interpretation of that poetry. Pirandello is also universally known for his drama, and Italica Press offers excellent new English translations of his Henry IV and his Six Characters in Search of an Author.
To celebrate the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s groundbreaking exhibition, “Jerusalem 1000–1400: Every People Under Heaven,” Italica Press has issued a new print edition of The Holy Land in the Middle Ages: Six Travelers’ Accounts. This edition presents texts written by medieval Christian, Muslim and Jewish travelers to the Holy Land.
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