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...

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...

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...

"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 ...

Discover the world of the Shadowhunters in the first installment of the New York Times and internationally bestselling Mortal Instruments series and “prepare to be hooked” (Entertainment Weekly). City of Bones is a Shadowhunters novel.A simple night out with her best friend, Simon, transforms into a nightmare when fifteen-year-old Clary Fray witnesses a murder at the Pandemonium Club. The culprits are three teenagers covered in strange ta...

*NOW A NETFLIX LIMITED SERIES—from producer and director Shawn Levy (Stranger Things) starring Mark Ruffalo, Hugh Laurie, and newcomer Aria Mia Loberti*Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist, the beloved instant New York Times bestseller and New York Times Book Review Top 10 Book about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World ...

A rich and multi-faceted aspect of the Italian Renaissance, the comedy has been largely overlooked as a cultural force during the period. In Renaissance Comedy, editor Donald Beecher corrects this oversight with a collection of eleven comedies representative of the principal styles of writing that define the genre. Proceeding from early, ‘erudite’ imitations of Plautus and Terence to satires, sentimental plays of the middle years, and later, more experimental works, the developmen...

First published in 1946, History of Western Philosophy went on to become the best-selling philosophy book of the twentieth century. A dazzlingly ambitious project, it remains unchallenged to this day as the ultimate introduction to Western philosophy. Providing a sophisticated overview of the ideas that have perplexed people from time immemorial, it is 'long on wit, intelligence and curmudgeonly scepticism', as the New York Times noted, and it is this, coupled with the sh...

rich story of passions, writing, rivalries, deaths, and war.Set in ducal Italy and post-revolutionary France, The Manzoni Family tells a rich story of passions, writing, rivalries, deaths, and war. It pivots on the figure of Alessandro Manzoni, celebrated Milanese nobleman, man of letters, and author of the masterpiece of nineteenth-century Italian literature, I promessi sposi (The Betrothed). But the tale begins with the matriarchal figure of Giu...

A superb translation of Dante’s classic tale that chronicles the poet’s journey through the nine circles of Hell, a dual-language edition vividly rendered and with an introduction and commentary by National Book Award–winning translator Allen Mandelbaum“Exactly what we have waited for these years, a Dante with clarity, eloquence, terror, and profoundly moving depths.”—Robert Fagles, Princeton UniversityIn the Inferno, renowned tran...

Set in Lombardy during the Spanish occupation of the late 1620s, The Betrothed tells the story of two young lovers, Renzo and Lucia, prevented from marrying by the petty tyrant Don Rodrigo, who desires Lucia for himself. Forced to flee, they are then cruelly separated, and must face many dangers including plague, famine and imprisonment, and confront a variety of strange characters - the mysterious Nun of Monza, the fiery Father Cristoforo and the sinister 'Unnamed' - in their struggle to ...