Italica Press Catalog 56, Winter 2018

Our Catalog 56, Winter 2018, is now available for download. It features six new titles for the 2017 season, plus all of Italica’s backlist.

Our big news this year is Italica’s inclusion in the JSTOR collection. All of our historical and art historical titles, and many of our literature translations are now available digitally through the JSTOR library collection for course adoptions and individual research. Please check your library’s online catalog for availability.

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 Grazia Verasani’s Quo Vadis, Baby? translated from the Italian, with an introduction, by Taylor Corse and Juliann Vitullo. Already a cult classic in Italy, with five sequels so far, a film by Gabriele Salvatores, and a TV mini-series on Sky, this novel introduces English readers to Private Detective Giorgia Cantini. Brutally honest, she smokes and drinks too much, exercises too little, eats on the run, and — the cardinal sin for Italian women — is a messy housekeeper. Even worse, she turns her detection skills onto the secret of her own sister’s mysterious death. Was it a suicide, or something more sinister and closer to home?

Forthcoming in January 2018 is the new dual-language edition of The Deceived by the Intronati of Siena, translated and edited by Donald Beecher & Massimo Ciavolella. This 1531 masterpiece of strong woman characters, cross-dressing, gender confusion, sex, and social satire formed the inspiration for several Renaissance plays and is the ultimate source for Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night.

January 2017 saw the publication of the new dual-language edition of Annibal Caro’s The Scruffy Scoundrels also edited and translated 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.

We’ve published Torquato Tasso again with Max Wickert’s edition and translation of Rinaldo. Tasso composed his first epic poem at the age of eighteen. It combines romantic epic — a form popularized by Italian masters like Boiardo and Ariosto — with the classical influences from Virgil and Aristotle. Rinaldo is a remarkably original achievement in terms of style, organization and plot. Tasso manages to shape an enormous array of characters, geographical backdrops, uncanny events and mysterious devices into an impressively unified narrative.

Earlier this year we presented 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.”

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.

The Petrarch Project

Italica Press has been publishing editons and studies of the work of Francesco Petrarch (1304-1374) since its first title in 1986. Over the years we have gradually added works by and about this foundational humanist. These now come together to provide a valuable series of titles for the classroom, the nonspecialist and the general reader. We call the series The Petrarch Project. Please follow this link to see already published titles.

Forthcoming titles include Petrarch’s Two Gardens: Landscape and the Image of Movement by William Tronzo; Petrarch: Political Writings edited and translated by Jirí Spicka; and Pseudo-Petrarch,  Lives of the Roman Popes and Emperors, translated and edited by Aldo S. Bernardo and Reta A. Bernardo, introduction and notes by Tania Zampini. 

We welcome further proposals for editions, translations and studies.

Medieval Naples: A Documentary History

We are happy to announce the publication of Ronald G. Musto’s Medieval Naples: A Documentary History 400–1400, Historical Texts. This title is one of Italica’s born-digital works and is now offered exclusively on the Kindle platform for both the Kindle itself and other handhelds, such as the iPad, iPhone and iPhone Touch. It incorporates all the texts available until now on the Medieval Naples section of our website and adds a new general introduction to the period, its historiography, and important research and interpretive issues. It will soon also be available in hardcover and paperback editions.

    Medieval Naples, 400–1400: A Documentary History is the first comprehensive and most complete English-language collection of sources yet to treat the history of the city from late Antiquity to the beginnings of the Renaissance. Sources are drawn from the historical, economic, literary, artistic, religious and cultural life from the fall of Rome through the Byzantine, Lombard, Norman, Hohenstaufen and Angevin periods.

    This work takes full advantage of digital resources: hyperlinking to complete bibliographical information on WorldCat, to Italica Press image galleries, to external web resources, including digital archives and manuscript collections, online reference works and images, and to our own online bibliographies and Interactive Map of Medieval Naples.

Elye of Saint-Gilles is Published

Elye of Saint-Gilles tells the story of Elye — the son of Count Julien of Saint-Gilles, a vassal of William of Orange — and of his exploits during his youth and early knighthood. It is part of the William of Orange cycle, whose historical kernel is linked to events of the First and Fourth Crusades and the Reconquest of Spain.

Elye of Saint-Gilles is the first English translation of the Old French chanson de geste and includes a new critical edition, facing the English text. This work encapsulates many of the standard elements of the French chanson de geste and provides an excellent example of the virtues of this literary form for entertainment and instruction.

This title has been edited and translated by A. Richard Hartman and Sandra C. Malicote. Their introduction places Elye firmly within the context of its literary forms, of the crusading ethos, and of Western attraction to — and prejudices against — the Muslim world. Italica Press has published this edition in both hardcover and paperback editions, and will soon make it available for the Kindle and other handhelds.

Ada Negri’s Songs of the Island

In December Italica Press published Songs of the Island, the second of two dual-language editions of one of Italy’s most important twentieth-century poets, Ada Negri.

Toward the end of March 1923, Negri enjoyed a brief holiday in Sicily and from there she went to the island of Capri, where she stayed for about a year and wrote I Canti dell’Isola/Songs of the Island. These poems are the result of the blinding light of the island, the ardor of a holiday both physical and spiritual. They embody “the magic of the tangible and the flashes of invisible reality,” and express the poet’s hour of quiet and reflection.

Via the impressionistic sweep of these images, the poet transports us with Capri’s explosion of light and color. Enchanted by pearls, amethyst and jade, the mythological sea of Ulysses, the unstoppable bleeding of poppies, climbing purple roses, and the castaways of dreams, the reader wants to be seduced, if only for a moment, by this world of the senses.

Songs of the Island is translated, with an introduction and bibliography, by Maria A. Costantini. Italica Press has published this edition in both hardcover and paperback editions, and will soon make it available for the Kindle and other handhelds.

Ada Negri’s The Book of Mara

This December Italica Press published two dual-language volumes by one of Italy’s most important twentieth-century poets, Ada Negri. Both are translated, with an introduction and bibliography, by Maria A. Costantini. The first, The Book of Mara, reflects Negri’s tormented love affair with a man whose life was cut short by premature death. It is, in essence, one long poem arising from a woman’s most intimate space  — a most passionate expression of love, loss and redemption. Written in 1919 with unusual frankness, especially in view of Italian society of the time, Il Libro di Mara is considered the high point of Negri’s poetic work.

Through metrical and formal execution, The Book of Mara demonstrates the originality of her verse, which opens up to a more personal dimension — almost prose-like. Her verse is impressionistic, almost mystical, spanned with bristling lyrics, sudden igniting bursts and visionary flashes.

Italica Press has published this edition in both hardcover and paperback editions, and will soon make it available for the Kindle and other handhelds.

Forthcoming Poetry Titles

We’re pleased to announce that three new titles will soon be joining our Poetry in Translation series. These include two by one of Italy’s greatest twentieth-century poets, Ada Negri: The Book of Mara and Songs of the Island, both translated and introduced by Maria A. Costantini. Both will be available in December 2010.

The third is the medieval epic romance, Elye of Saint-Gilles, edited and translated by A. Richard Hartman and Sandra C. Malicote, available in November 2010. All three will be presented as dual-language editions.

Hell on the Radio

On Sunday, September 26th, Eileen Gardiner will be interviewed on Tapestry, Canadian Broadcasting’s weekly show on faith. The show will be devoted to notions of the afterlife, and Gardiner’s segment will be discussing medieval and modern notions of hell. Mary Hynes hosts. Like NPR’s Speaking of Faith, this weekly program is an “engaging, provocative and unexpected hour of radio: an hour in which rabbis and poets get equal time on the topic of faith, science-fiction writers and physicist-priests ponder the great creation myths, athletes explore the hero’s journey as a spiritual metaphor, and architects examine the idea of space for the soul.”

Tapestry airs on CBC Radio One on Sunday afternoon at 2:00 Atlantic, Eastern and Central; 3:00 Pacific; and 4:00 Mountain. It is rebroadcast on Thursday at 3:00. After the first airing on September 26th, you can listen to the show or download a podcast at http://www.cbc.ca/tapestry .

Dr. Gardiner is the author of several books on Hell, including Visions of Heaven and Hell Before Dante, and is the curator of the website “Hell-on-Line.” She was recently one of the scholars featured on the History Channel special, “Gates of Hell,” which is now also available on DVD and iTunes.