Adapted
from Michael San Filippo,
(http://italian.about.com)
There
are a number of Italian texts, both classic and contemporary, that are
must-reads for anyone interested in the history, culture, and language of
A
wide-ranging collection from one of the foremost Italian writers of the 20th
century. With an unerring eye and unparalleled eloquence, Natalia Ginzburg
observes everything around her, sparing no one, least of all herself. In these
essays Ginzburg writes honestly and insightfully about being a writer and mother,
being displaced during World War II, and experiencing deprivation in postwar
Petrarchan
and Shakespearen Sonnets will be compared and contrasted in class.
Francesco Petrarca,
one of the great early Renaissance humanists, wrote love poetry in the vulgar
tongue. His Canzoniere had enormous influence on the poets of the 15th and 16th
centuries. Head-over-heels in love with Laura, Petrarca wrote 365 sonnets, one
passionate poem a day dedicated to his true love.
Written
by the Italian humanist writer Giovanni Boccaccio almost 650 years ago, Il
Decamerone contains a hundred tales supposedly told in ten days by a party of
ten young people who had fled from the Black Death in
The poem
by Dante, begun in exile in 1306 and allegorically describing the poet's (by
implication mankind's) journey through life to salvation. The Commedia is the
central and culminating literary work of medieval
A
classic of modern fiction. Set in the 1860s, The Leopard is the spellbinding
story of a decadent, dying Sicilian aristocracy threatened by the approaching
forces of democracy and revolution. Giuseppe di Lampedusa, also an astronomer
and a Sicilian prince, was 58 when he started to write The Leopard, though he
had had it in his mind for 25 years.
The
definitive manual of modern politics written by the Italian Renaissance
political philosopher Nicolò Machiavelli almost 500 years ago.
Alessandro
Manzoni's powerfully characterized historical reconstruction of plague-ravaged
17th-century
A romance epic
by the Italian poet Ludovico Ariosto.
Play in
three acts by Luigi Pirandello, produced and published in Italian in 1921.
Introducing Pirandello's device of the "theater within the theater,"
the play explores various levels of illusion and reality. It had a great impact
on later playwrights, particularly such practitioners of the Theater of the
Absurd as Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco, and Jean Genet.
A
collection of thirteen stories written by Leonardo Sciascia between 1959 and
1972, they offer a kind of capsule history of Sicily, ranging through several
hundred years and engaging the country's events from their exhilarating and
terrible underside.
literary translations by Ercole Guidi for all those in love with the language of Dante.http://ercoleguidi.altervista.org/the.htm |
Andrea DeCarlo (1989)
Two
of Two
Two friends, two choices, two stories in DeCarlo's great, best-selling novel.
Dacia Maraini (1990)
The
Long Life of Marianna Ucrìa
Marianna, immured in her mysterious and disturbing silence, lives, loves, and
suffers in 17th century Sicily.
Carlo Emilio Gadda (1946)
That
Awful Mess on Via Merulana
From this masterpiece by the father of Italy's Neo-avanguardia, The Palace of
Gold.
Aldo Busi (2001)
Letter
Written fron Another Son to Another Dad
A perfect son writes the dream-dad we've all wished to have. From: Manual
of the Perfect Dad.
Niccolò Ammaniti (1996)
The
Zoologist
From the collection Mud, published by Mondadori,
an hilarious short story by Italy's most successful novelist of his generation.
Umberto Eco (2001)
Holy
Wars, Passion and Reason
Random thoughts upon the superiority of cultures.
Beppe Severgnini (2001)
The
Snooper
An alien in Milan's fashion world. One: the Rizzoli man.
Alda Merini (2002)
Poems
Among the highest voices of Italy's contemporary poetry. Accademia di
Francia's 2002 Nobel Prize for Literature nominee.
Carmen Covito (2002)
The
Red and the Dark
Archeology, adventure, comedy, in one of Italy's most brilliant writers'
latest novel.
Carmen Covito (2001)
Tales form
the Web
Seven short stories by this famous Italian novelist, now collected into
Italy's first self-published e-book.
Luciano De Crescenzo (2001)
The
Doppelgänger
"Just stop thinking and you'll hear the ticking away of time."
Vincenzo Cerami (2001)
Forgotten
Lips
There she was, at last, popping out from behind the newsstand at Piazza
Trilussa. She had dropped out of sight for a half hour now. Carlo heaved a
good sigh and was back on her tail....
Mario Biondi (1999)
Code
Shadow
An obscure power controls all that we write, say, think? Find out in Mario
Biondi's breathtaking thriller.
Mario Biondi (1985)
The
Eyes of a Woman
Premio Campiello 1985 (Italy's top literary award). A great Italian Family
Saga unfolding with the event that have come to connote the century behind us.
Ercole Guidi (1997)
The Long
Journey of the Western Mind
From classical to post-modern, a chronological journey through the masters and
the events that have shaped the Western Mind.
Julius Caesar (English)
The Broker
That Fine Italian Hand
Italian Days
Under the Tuscan Sun
Desiring Italy
The Italians
Italian Neighbors
An Italian Education
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
The House of Medici
The Architecture of the Italian Renaissance
Travelers' Tales Italy