"Contributes a fresh voice to the debate over higher education in America, writing not about what we ought to know, but about why it's important to know." —Los Angeles Times Book Review

President of Yale University from 1978 to 1986 and before that professor of English at Yale, A. Bartlett Giamatti was one of the voices that most clearly articulated the role of the university in the modern world.

In twenty-four essays here, Mr. Giamatti explores the relationship of the university to government, industry, and the private sector. He defines the essence of liberal education, rooted in freedom, dedicated to learning for its own sake. He exposes the menace of ideologues of any stripe who would impose on the university a limiting political, religious, or social agenda. Throughout, Giamatti sets forth his commitment to an education that "will contantly test rather than impose the values it cherishes."

"Eloquent in support of the values of a liberal education, these esssays bespeak the product of such formation, a man at east with the cultural flow of past and present." —Publishers Weekly

"A rich and rewarding analysis. . . . [Giamatti] has issued a much-needed call for civility and reasoned discourse. . . . A pleasure to read." —James O. Freedman, president, Dartmouth College

"My hope has been to provide students (and teachers) of Spenser's epic with ways of approaching the poem. The first part of the book is concerned with contexts the life of Spenser, some forms the epic took before (and after) his own, the pervasiveness of certain literary figures (like Chaucer) and figures from literature (like Arthur) during his time. In discussing these topics, I have also tried to place Spenser's text itself. The chapter on overall structure, where others have preceded me, is intended to fasten on the whole poem. The next, on Pageantry, is my own foray into the subject and strategems of Allegory, though I have chosen to speak of Allegory in terms the poem (and not simply the Letter to Raleigh) constantly employs. This chapter and the last three then focus on the 'play of double senses' (a text derived from Book III, canto iv, stanza 28) as I see it working in specific ways in the epic, thus suggesting how Spenser participates in the epic tradition that I sketched in Chapter II." from the Preface

Bernart de Ventadorn was a twelfth-century Catalan poet and troubador. These forty-one poems, filled with nostalgia, joy, and tenderness, were written between 1150 and 1180. This edition, with notes and a complete glossary, contains the original texts accompanied by the only English translations available at the time of publication.