The rugged landscape of Baronia on Sardinia sets the scene for this novel of crime, guilt and retribution. This novel presents the story of the Pintor sisters - from a family of noble landowners now in decline - their nephew Giacinto, and their servant Efix, who is trying to make up for a mysterious sin committed many years before. Around, below, and inside them the raging Mediterranean storms, the jagged mountains, the murmuring forests, and the gushing springs form a Greek chorus of witness to the tragic drama of this unforgiving land. Deledda tells her story with her characteristic love of the natural landscape and fascination with the folk culture of the island, with details about the famous religious festivals held in mountain encampments and the lore of the "dark beings who populate the Sardinian night, the fairies who live in rocks and caves, and the sprites with seven red caps who bother sleep." Introduction by the Sardinian ethnographer, Dolores Turchi.

Each volume in the Exegetical Summaries series works through the original text phrase by phrase. English equivalents are provided for all Hebrew and Greek words, making this an excellent reference for exegetes of all levels. Questions that occur to exegetes as they study the text are stated and then answered by summarizing the ways many scholars have interpreted the text. This information should help translators or students in making their own exegetical decisions. As a basis for discussion, a semi-literal translation of the text is given. The first question to be answered is the meaning of key words in context. Information from standard lexicons is given and then translations of the word are cited from a dozen major Bible versions and from commentaries that offer their own translations of the text. Questions about the grammar and discourse structure of the original languages are answered by summarizing the views of many commentators. When exegetical disagreements appear in the commentaries and versions, the various interpretations are listed. This book is not intended to replace the commentaries that are consulted. Rather than being a stand-alone commentary, this book summarizes many important details of exegesis that should be considered in studying the biblical text. Martha King worked with SIL in Guatemala from 1967-1992, first as a Bible translator in a Cakchiquel language, later as a supervisor of mother-tongue translators in two other Cakchiquel languages. She has also served as a translation consultant. Since her marriage to SIL International Translation Consultant Ellis Deibler in 2004, she and her husband have traveled to various countries checking translations of books of the Bible in a number of languages.

What made a young Sardinian woman in the nineteenth century think that she could become a famous writer, especially considering the time and her position, her gender and lack of education? Yet Grazia Deledda achieved such status in the literary world that publishers in Italy vied for her fiction. Nearly seventy years after her death, her novels continue to be reprinted and translated, and critical appreciation of her work continues to grow. This - the first full length biography of Deledda in English for an adult audience - is the story of a woman who overcame obstacles that would discourage most people, and went on to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1926. The book charts her life and work from her childhood in Sardinia to her death in Rome.

The Renaissance movement known as humanism eventually spread from Italy through all of western Europe, transforming early modern culture in ways that are still being felt and debated. Central to these debates-and to this book-is the question of whether (and how) the humanist movement contributed to the secularization of Western cultural traditions at the end of the Middle Ages. A preeminent scholar of Italian humanism, Riccardo Fubini approaches this question in a new way-by redefining the problem of secularization more carefully to show how humanists can at once be secularizers and religious thinkers. The result is a provocative vision of the humanist movement. Humanism and Secularization offers a nuanced account of humanists contesting medieval ideas about authority not in order to reject Christianity or even orthodoxy, but to claim for themselves the right to define what it meant to be a Christian. Fubini analyzes key texts by major humanists-isuch as Petrarch, Poggio, and Valla-from the first century of the movement. As he subtly works out these authors' views on religion and the Church from both biographical and textual information, Fubini reveals in detail the new historical consciousness that animated the humanists in their reading of classical and patristic texts. His book as a whole shows convincingly just how radical the humanism of the first half of the fifteenth century was and how sharply it challenged well-entrenched ideas and institutions. Appearing here in English for the first time, his work provides a model set of readings of humanist texts and a critical perspective on Italian humanism that will alter and enrich discussion and understanding of the nature of the humanist movement.

Since the publication of Martha King's New Italian Women: A Collection of Short Fiction by Italica Press in 1989, a whole new generation of women writers, born and educated after World War II, has grown up on the Italian literary scene. They lived through the revolution of the late 1960s and have enjoyed economic and social advantages unimaginable by previous generations. The militant 1960s and '70s also broke down many traditional barriers that had kept women at home and restricted their job possibilities. Broader experiences provided women writers of the post-war generation with new material for creative expression and new attitudes to explore. An entirely new range of subjects displaces the autobiographical and memory writing of earlier years. This younger generation deals more openly with sexual themes and shows a willingness to take on heretofore unmentionable topics. They describe abuse, mental illness, the body and erotic relationships are described with a new frankness. At the same time, they treat the realities of modernity - apartment living, the television, pop music and the internet, the Americanization of the culture and the language - as the tangible background of their fictions, often with cutting satire or subversive wit. The wider horizons of this post-war generation, and greater artistic freedom, have given them new subjects to explore. These writers have taken their rightful place in the mainstream of current fiction, often at a surprisingly young age, as they imaginatively explore their expanding world with an unapologetic openness and with the unflinching courage to reveal contemporary reality in a variety of voices. Their literary precursors would be proud. The authors include: Silvia Ballestra, Melania G. Mazzucco, Camilla Baresani, Marta Morazzoni, Rosanna Campo, Laura Pariani, Paola Capriolo, Romana Petri, Antonella Cilento, Sandra Petrignani, Emilia Cirillo, Elisabetta Rasy, Carmen Covito, Monica Sarsini, Maria Rosa Cutrufelli, Clara Sereni, Elena Ferrante, Susanna Tamaro, Margherita Giacobino, Valeria Vigano, Margaret Mazzantini, Simona Vinci. The translators include: Maryanne De Julio, Carol Lazzaro-Weis, Carmine G. Di Biase, Barbara Nucci, Adria Frizzi, Minna Proctor, Ann Gagliardi, Martha Witt, Angela M. Jeannet, Mary Ann Frese Witt, Martha King, Sharon Wood.