'Thus she was decapitated, and this was the end to which she was brought by her unbridled lusts.' For over two centuries after Boccaccio's groundbreaking Decameron, the Italian novella exercised a crucial influence over European prose fiction. With thirty-nine stories by nineteen authors, many translated for the first time, this anthology presents tales from the whole genre and period. Here we meet a rich cast of humble peasants and shrewd craftsmen, frustrated wi...

'Live now and listen, do not wait in vain Until tomorrow; pluck life's rose today.' Joachim du Bellay and Pierre de Ronsard are two of the major sixteenth-century French poets and leaders of the extraordinary group known as 'La Pléiade'. Determined to create a national vernacular literature, the Pléiade poets profited from an intense study of Greek and Roman models and from a creative use of classical mythology to produce a body of verse that reflects the vigour and variet...

Judicially condemned in 1857 as offensive to public morality, The Flowers of Evil is now regarded as the most influential volume of poetry published in the nineteenth century. Torn between intense sensuality and profound spiritual yearning, racked by debt and disease, Baudelaire transformed his own experience of Parisian life into a work of universal significance. With his unflinching examination of the dark aspects and unconventional manifestations of sexuality, his pioneering portrayal o...

SIX CHARACTERS IN SEARCH OF AN AUTHOR * HENRY IV * THE MOUNTAIN GIANTS Pirandello ranks with Strindberg, Brecht, and Beckett as a seminal figure in modern drama. Innovative and influential, he broke decisively with the conventions of realist theatre to foreground the tensions between art and reality. In his best known play, six characters, imagined but then abandoned by their author, intrude on the rehearsals of a provincial theatre company in an attempt to play out their ...

The 'Canzoniere', a sequence of sonnets and other verse forms, were written over a period of about 40 years. They describe Petrarch's intense love for Laura, whom he first met in Avignon in 1327, and her effect on him after she died in 1348. The collection is an examination of the poet's growing spiritual crisis, and also explores important contemporary issues such as the role of the papacy and religion.

It is not unusual for Calumny to follow the best Wits, and those whom God hath endowed with so extraordinary Talent, upon weak and slight grounds. It is not also unusual for Men to side easier with calumny against innocent persons, then with those truths that justifie them; therefore no body ought to wonder, if Michael Nostradamus hath been so much cried down and defamed by several Authors, being in the number of those extraordinary persons, whom God had priviledged with that grace so much...

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...

This file includes the original (Inferno, Purgatorio, and Inferno) in Italian, plus an English translation by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. According to Wikipedia: "Durante degli Alighieri ( c.1265 - 1321), commonly known as Dante Alighieri, was a Florentine poet of the Middle Ages. His central work, the Divina Commedia (originally called "Commedia" and later called "Divina" (divine) by Boccaccio hence "Divina Commedia"), is often considered the greatest literary work composed in the Italian...

RÉSUMÉ : "Les Fleurs du Mal" de Charles Baudelaire est un recueil de poèmes qui a marqué un tournant dans l'histoire de la littérature française. Publié pour la première fois en 1857, ce chef-d'oeuvre explore les thèmes de la beauté, du spleen, de l'amour, et de la mort, tout en reflétant les tensions et les contradictions de la société urbaine du XIXe siècle. Baudelaire y dépeint un monde où la beauté et le mal se côtoient, offrant une vision poétique à la fois sombre et sublime. À traver...

The Delphi Poets Series offers readers the works of literature's finest poets, with superior formatting. This volume presents the works of world poet Dante Alighieri, with beautiful illustrations, the original Italian texts and bonus material. (Version 1)* Beautifully illustrated with images relating to Dante's life and works* Concise introductions to the poetry* Excellent formatting of the poems* Both verse and prose translations of THE DIVINE COMEDY, with glossed footnot...

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...

This new translation presents the Italian text of the Inferno, and, on facing pages, Robert Durling's new prose translation, which brings a new power and accuracy to the rendering of Dantes extraordinary vision of Hell, with all its terror, pathos, and sardonic humor, and its penetrating analyses of the psychology of sin and the ills that plague society. Readers will prize the directness and clarity, the rich expressiveness, and the rigorous accuracy of this contemporary prose translation,...