The expert readings in this collection explore the ten stories of Day Six of Boccaccio's Decameron – a day that involves meditations on language, narration, and meaning

Taking a philological and feminist approach, and drawing on the Bakhtinian concept of the grotesque body and on the poetics of transgression, The Ugly Woman is a unique look at the essential counterdiscourse of the celebrated Italian poetic canon and a valuable contribution to the study of women in literature.

My Karst and My City and Other Essays is the first book available in English on the work of Scipio Slataper, one of the most prominent intellectuals active in Trieste at the turn of the twentieth century.

This compilation of eleven essays offers exciting new perspectives on one of the greatest works of Italian literature.

In Tuscan Spaces, Silvia Ross focuses on constructions of Tuscany in twentieth-century Italian literature and juxtaposes them with English prose works by such authors as E.M. Forster and Frances Mayes to expose the complexity of literary representation centred on a single milieu.

In Addressing the Letter, Laura A. Salsini considers how the works of authors including the Marchesa Colombi, Sibilla Aleramo, Gianna Manzini, Natalia Ginzburg, and Oriana Fallaci highlight such issues as love, the loss of ideals, lack of communication and connection, and feminist ideology.

Based on meticulous research in the archives of some of the most prominent Italian avant-garde writers, Poetry on Stage examines the literary and ideological climate of the sixties and seventies.

Examining Dante's life-long dialogue with Augustine from a new point of view, Marchesi goes beyond traditional inquiries to engage more technical questions relating to Dante's evolving ideas on how language, poetry, and interpretation should work.

Lucamante looks at the ways in which both Italian literary tradition and external influences have assisted Italian women writers in rethinking the theoretical and aesthetic ties between author, text, and readership in the construction of the novel.

This book seeks to redefine, recontextualize, and reassess Italian neorealism – an artistic movement characterized by stories set among the poor and working class – through innovative close readings and comparative analysis.

Stories about pranks figure prominently in Boccaccio’s Decameron. This book explores Boccaccio’s poetics of repetition, accumulation, and contiguity in Day Eight, a day rich in tales of practical jokes.

A highly original and comprehensive reading, The Poetics of Dante's Paradiso challenges established scholarly interpretations to demonstrate that the intricacies of Dante's text reveal a subtle irony, employed to deliver a sharp critique of the corrupt church and empire of his own time.

In this edition, the Breviary of Aesthetics is presented in a brand new English translation and accompanied by informative endnotes that discuss many of the philosophers, writers, and works cited by Croce in his original text.

This book examines the many ways in which anger and indignation shape authorial intentions and determine the products of contemporary Italian artists.

The Court and Its Critics focuses on the disillusionment with courtliness, the derision of those who live at court, and the open hostility toward the court, themes common to Renaissance culture.

The First Voyage around the World is also a remarkably accurate ethnographic and geographical account of the circumnavigation, and one that has earned its reputation among modern historiographers and students of the early contacts between Europe and the East Indies.