This tranlation of Torquato Tasso's ll re Torrismondo, the first to be made directly from the Italian into English, is intended to help those students and scholars who do not command the language of the original text. This translation provides readers with a wider range of the Italian tragedy as a genre; it also allows readers to acquire a deeper awareness of the entire spectrum of the Italian Renaissance in its final brilliance. Tasso's King Torrismondo provides an example of Neo-Aristotelian dramatic theory of the second half of the fifteenth century. It incorporates into the dramatic genre elements of the epic lyric poem. Tasso's langugae can also be studied as an example of "imitation" of Virgil, Dante, Petrach, and Tasso's own epic. Finally, Tasso's Torrismondo affords us an opportunity of comparative analysis of French, English, and Spanish literature in the development of tragedy as a European genre.

This Norton Critical Edition of Dante's masterpiece is based on Michael Palma's verse translation, which is acclaimed for its elegant rendering of Dante's triple-rhyme scheme into contemporary English. Richard Wilbur praises Palma's translation as "accurate as to sense, fully rhymed, and easy, as a rule, in its movement through the tercets. Readers will find it admirably clear and readable." The text is accompanied by detailed explanatory annotations.
Also included in this edition are an illuminating introduction by Giuseppe Mazzotta, a Translator's Note, The Plan of Dante's Hell, and six maps and illustrations.
"Criticism" provides twelve interpretations by, among others, John Freccero, Robert M. Durling, Alison Cornish, Teodolinda Barolini, Giuseppe Mazzotta, and Robert Hollander.
A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are also included.
About the Series: No other series of classic texts equals the caliber of the Norton Critical Editions. Each volume combines the most authoritative text available with the comprehensive pedagogical apparatus necessary to appreciate the work fully. Careful editing, first-rate translation, and thorough explanatory annotations allow each text to meet the highest literary standards while remaining accessible to students. Each edition is printed on acid-free paper and every text in the series remains in print. Norton Critical Editions are the choice for excellence in scholarship for students at more than 2,000 universities worldwide.

The way we create and organize knowledge is the theme of From the Tree to the Labyrinth, a major achievement by one of the world's foremost thinkers on language and interpretation. Umberto Eco begins by arguing that our familiar system of classification by genus and species derives from the Neo-Platonist idea of a "tree of knowledge." He then moves to the idea of the dictionary, which--like a tree whose trunk anchors a great hierarchy of branching categories--orders knowledge into a matrix of definitions. In Eco's view, though, the dictionary is too rigid: it turns knowledge into a closed system. A more flexible organizational scheme is the encyclopedia, which --instead of resembling a tree with finite branches--offers a labyrinth of never-ending pathways. Presenting knowledge as a network of interlinked relationships, the encyclopedia sacrifices humankind's dream of possessing absolute knowledge, but in compensation we gain the freedom to pursue an infinity of new connections and meanings. Moving effortlessly from analyses of Aristotle and James Joyce to the philosophical difficulties of telling dogs from cats, Eco demonstrates time and again his inimitable ability to bridge ancient, medieval, and modern modes of thought. From the Tree to the Labyrinth is a brilliant illustration of Eco's longstanding argument that problems of interpretation can be solved only in historical context.

This translation of Torquato Tasso's Il re Torrismondo, the first to be made directly from the Italian into English, is intended to help those students and scholars who do not command the language of the original text. This translation provides readers with a wider range of the Italian tragedy as a genre; it also allows readers to acquire a deeper awareness of the entire spectrum of the Italian Renaissance in its final brilliance. Tasso's King Torrismondo provides an example of Neo-Aristotelian dramatic theory of the second half of the fifteenth century. It incorporates into the dramatic genre elements of the epic lyric poem. Tasso's language can also be studied as an example of "imitation" of Virgil, Dante, Petrarch, and Tasso's own epic. Finally, Tasso's Torrismondo affords us an opportunity of comparative analysis of French, English, and Spanish literature in the development of tragedy as a European genre.

With this heady exploration of time and space, rumors and silence, colors, tastes, and ideas, Robert Bonfil recreates the richness of Jewish life in Renaissance Italy. He also forces us to rethink conventional interpretations of the period, which feature terms like 'assimilation' and 'acculturation'. Questioning the Italians' presumed capacity for tolerance and civility, he points out that Jews were frequently uprooted and persecuted, and where stable communities did grow up, it was because the hostility of the Christian population had somehow been overcome. After the ghetto was imposed in Venice, Rome, and other Italian cities, Jewish settlement became more concentrated. Bonfil claims that the ghetto experience did more to intensify Jewish self-perception in early modern Europe than the supposed acculturation of the Renaissance. He shows how, paradoxically, ghetto living opened and transformed Jewish culture, hastening secularization and modernization. Bonfil's detailed picture reveals in the Italian Jews a sensitivity and self-awareness that took into account every aspect of the larger society. His inside view of a culture flourishing under stress enables us to understand how identity is perceived through constant interplay - on whatever terms - with the Other.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1998.

This new critical volume, the second to appear in the three-volume "Lectura Dantis, "contains expert, focused commentary on the "Purgatorio "by thirty-three international scholars, each of whom presents to the nonspecialist reader one of the cantos of the transitional middle cantica of Dante's unique Christian epic. The cast of characters is as colorful as before, although this time most of them are headed for salvation. The canto-by-canto commentary allows each contributor his or her individual voice and results in a deeper, richer awareness of Dante's timeless aspirations and achievements.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1998.

The California Lectura Dantis is the long-awaited companion to the three-volume verse translation by Allen Mandelbaum of Dante's "Divine Comedy," Mandelbaum's translation, with facing original text and with illustrations by Barry Moser, has been praised by Robert Fagles as "exactly what we have waited for these years, a Dante with clarity, eloquence, terror, and profoundly moving depths," and by the late James Merrill as "lucid and strong . . . with rich orchestration . . . overall sweep and felicity . . . and countless free, brilliant, utterly Dantesque strokes." Charles Simic called the work "a miracle. A lesson in the art of translation and a model (an encyclopedia) for poets. The full range and richness of American English is displayed as perhaps never before."
This collection of commentaries on the first part of the "Comedy" consists of commissioned essays, one for each canto, by a distinguished group of international scholar-critics. Readers of Dante will find this "Inferno" volume an enlightening and indispensable guide, the kind of lucid commentary that is truly adapted to the general reader as well as the student and scholar.