Prue Shaw’s absorbing, highly accessible introduction to the Commedia promises to be the essential edition for years to come.The Commedia, Dante’s epic story of one man’s journey from the darkness and terror of hell to the revelation of divine light in heaven, is one of the greatest works of Western literature, but it can seem daunting to the English-speaking reader. College courses often cherry-pick the most arresting passages from Inferno and barely glan...

This book, first published in 1996, was the first new translation for forty years of a fascinating work of political theory. Dante's Monarchy addresses the fundamental question of what form of political organization best suits human nature; it embodies a political vision of startling originality and power, and illuminates the intellectual interests and achievements of one of the world's great poets. Prue Shaw's translation is accompanied by a full introduction and notes, which provide a co...

The best and most eloquent introduction to Dante for our time.Prue Shaw is one of the world's foremost authorities on Dante. Written with the general reader in mind, Reading Dante brings her knowledge to bear in an accessible yet expert introduction to his great poem.This is far more than an exegesis of Dante’s three-part Commedia. Shaw communicates the imaginative power, the linguistic skill and the emotional intensity of Dante’s poetry—t...

"Giacomo Leopardi, Italy's great poet of the Romantic age, is the author of some of the most beautiful and best-loved poems in the Italian language and some of the most remarkable letters in European literature. The interest of the letters in both biographical and literary: they document the background - the difficult personal circumstances, the intense and troubled family relationships, the contacts and friendships with other writers - against which a haunting and compelling poetic voice ...

A picaresque novel of how one person's actions can have far-reaching—even global—consequences, from a #1 international bestselling author."A funny and completely implausible farce about a woman, a bomb and a man's frustrated ambition to overthrow the king of Sweden. . . . The rest of the world will chuckle all the way through it." — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)In a tiny shack in the largest tow...

Winner of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Non-FictionWinner of the 2011 National Book Award for Non-FictionOne of the world's most celebrated scholars, Stephen Greenblatt has crafted both an innovative work of history and a thrilling story of discovery, in which one manuscript, plucked from a thousand years of neglect, changed the course of human thought and made possible the world as we know it.Nearly six hundred years ago, a short, genial, cannily alert man in his late...

A celebration of the language and culture of Italy, La Bella Lingua is the story of how a language shaped a nation, told against the backdrop of one woman’s personal quest to speak fluent Italian.For anyone who has been to Italy, the fantasy of living the Italian life is powerfully seductive. But to truly become Italian, one must learn the language. This is how Dianne Hales began her journey. In La Bella Lingua, she brings the story of her decades...

Describing Dante's descent into Hell midway through his life with Virgil as a guide, Inferno depicts a cruel underworld in which desperate figures are condemned to eternal damnation for committing one or more of seven deadly sins. As he descends through nine concentric circles of increasingly agonising torture, Dante encounters doomed souls including the pagan Aeneas, the liar Odysseus, the suicide Cleopatra, and his own political enemies, damned for their deceit. Led by leering demons, th...

Four Dissertations is a collection of four essays by the Scottish enlightenment philosopher David Hume, first published in 1757. The four essays are:The Natural History of Religion Of the Passions Of Tragedy Of the Standard of Taste Excerpted from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

The epic grandeur of Dante’s masterpiece has inspired readers for 700 years, andhas entered the human imagination. But the further we move from the late medieval world of Dante, the more a rich understanding and enjoyment of the poem depends on knowledgeable guidance. Robert Hollander, a renowned scholar and master teacher of Dante, and Jean Hollander, an accomplished poet, have written a beautifully accurate and clear verse translation of the first volume of Dante’s epic poem, the Divine ...

The ‘Divine’ sculptor, painter, architect, poet and engineer, Michelangelo Buonarroti exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art, producing masterpieces that rank among the most famous in existence. Delphi’s groundbreaking ‘Masters of Art Series’ presents the world’s first digital e-Art books, allowing digital readers to explore the works of the world’s greatest artists in comprehensive detail. This volume presents the complete works of Michelangelo, with c...

"This narrative of the first half of Augustine's life conjures the intellectual and social milieu of the late Roman Empire with a Proustian relish for detail." -- New York TimesIn Augustine, celebrated historian Robin Lane Fox follows Augustine of Hippo on his journey to the writing of his Confessions. Unbaptized, Augustine indulged in a life of lust before finally confessing and converting. Lane Fox recounts Augustine's sexual sins, his time in an outlawed hereti...