This volume shows the pervasiveness over a millennium and a half of the little-studied phenomenon of multi-tier intertextuality, whether as 'linear' window reference - where author C simultaneously imitates or alludes to a text by author A and its imitation by author B - or as multi-directional imitative clusters. It begins with essays on classical literature from Homer to the high Roman empire, where the feature first becomes prominent; then comes late antiquity, a lively area of research at present; and, after a series of essays on European neo-Latin literature from Petrarch to 1600, another area where developments are moving rapidly, the volume concludes with early modern vernacular literatures (Italian, French, Portuguese and English). Most papers concern verse, but prose is not ignored. The introduction to the volume discusses the relevant methodological issues. An Afterword outlines the critical history of 'window reference' and includes a short essay by Professor Richard Thomas, of Harvard University, who coined the term in the 1980s.

A fresh English translation of five Alberti works that illuminate new aspects of the literary aims and development of the first “Renaissance man.� Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472) was one of the most famous figures of the Italian Renaissance. His extraordinary range of abilities as a writer, architect, art theorist, and even athlete earned him the controversial title of the first “Renaissance man.� The works collected in Biographical and Autobiographical Writings reflect Alberti’s lived experiences and his interests in the genre. This volume includes On the Advantages and Disadvantages of Literature, which partly reflects his experiences as a student in Bologna; The Life of St. Potitus, the biography of a Christian martyr, which also contains autobiographical projections and was to have been the first in a series of lives of saints; My Dog, a mock funeral oration for his dead dog; My Life, one of the first autobiographies of the early modern period and the main source for Jacob Burckhardt’s portrait of Alberti; and a comic encomium, The Fly. In particular, the last three works—My Dog, My Life, and The Fly—constitute a kind of trilogy, as the humanist finds one of his main themes, the portrait of the ideal life, with a strong emphasis on humor. This edition presents the first collected English translations of these works alongside an authoritative Latin text.

This volume invites us to revisit ideology, censorship and translation by adopting a variety of perspectives. It presents case studies and theoretical analyses from different chronological periods and focuses on a variety of genres, themes and audiences. Focusing on issues that have thus far not been addressed in a sufficiently connected way and from a variety of disciplines, they analyse authentic translation work, procedures and strategies. The book considers the ethical and ideological implications for the translator, re-examines the role of the ideologist or the censor—as a stand-alone individual, as representative of a group, or as part of a larger apparatus—and establishes the translator’s scope of action. The chapters presented here contribute new ideas that help to elucidate both the role of the translator throughout history, as well as current practices. Collectively, in demonstrating the role that ideology and censorship play in the act of translation, the authors help to establish a connection between the past and the present across different genres, cultural traditions and audiences. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Perspectives: Studies in Translation Theory and Practice.

This volume invites us to revisit ideology, censorship and translation by adopting a variety of perspectives. It presents case studies and theoretical analyses from different chronological periods and focuses on a variety of genres, themes and audiences. Focusing on issues that have thus far not been addressed in a sufficiently connected way and from a variety of disciplines, they analyse authentic translation work, procedures and strategies. The book considers the ethical and ideological implications for the translator, re-examines the role of the ideologist or the censor-as a stand-alone individual, as representative of a group, or as part of a larger apparatus-and establishes the translator's scope of action. The chapters presented here contribute new ideas that help to elucidate both the role of the translator throughout history, as well as current practices. Collectively, in demonstrating the role that ideology and censorship play in the act of translation, the authors help to establish a connection between the past and the present across different genres, cultural traditions and audiences. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Perspectives: Studies in Translation Theory and Practice.

This book presents a collection of twelve essays on the interplay between individual lives and life-writing and the wider social and political history of Italy. It focuses on well-known writers and their varying anxieties about autobiographical writing.

Giordano Bruno (1548-1600), who died at the stake, is one of the best-known symbols of anti-establishment thought. The theme of this volume, which is offered as a collection of essays to honour the distinguished Bruno scholar Hilary Gatti, reflects her constant concern for the principles of cultural freedom and independent thinking. Several essays deal with Bruno himself, including an analysis of the Eroici furori, a study of his reception in relation to the group known as the Novatores, and discussions of several important aspects of his stay in England. The authors and texts discussed here are linked by a relentless interest in the question of authority and originality, and they range from literary figures such as Alberti (1404-72), Vasari (1511-74) and the proponents of quantitative verse in sixteenth-century England to controversial philosophers who, like Bruno, were condemned by the Church, such as Tommaso Campanella (1568-1639) and Giulio Cesare Vanini (1585-1619). Taken together, these chapters show how much that was new and revolutionary in early modern culture came from its confrontation with the past. Martin McLaughlin is Agnelli-Serena Professor of Italian at Oxford. Elisabetta Tarantino is a Teaching Fellow in the Department of Italian at the University of Warwick.

In this volume, a team of experts in various fields considers the impact of Italian politics and culture on British life from the early nineteenth century to the first decades of the twentieth century. The essays cover a wide range of topics: politics, music, the visual arts, literature and the intellectual life, as well as the emergence of Italian as an academic discipline. Edited, with an introduction, by Martin McLaughlin, the volume includes essays by Ian Campbell, Hilary Fraser, T.G. Griffith, David Kimbell, John Lindon, Denis Mack Smith, Brian Moloney and J.R. Woodhouse, as well as the last article written by the late Serena Professor of Italian at Cambridge, Uberto Limentani. (Legenda 2000)

Italo Calvino's enchanting stories about the evolution of the universe, with characters that are fashioned from mathematical formulae and cellular structures, The Complete Cosmicomics is translated by Martin McLaughlin, Tim Parks and William Weaver in Penguin Modern Classics. 'Naturally, we were all there, - dld Qfwfq said, - where else could we have been? Nobody knew then that there could be space. Or time either: what use did we have for time, packed in there like sardines?' The Cosmicomics tell the story of the history of the universe, from the big bang, through millennia and across galaxies. It is witnessed through the eyes of 'cosmic know-it-all' Qfwfq, an exuberant, chameleon-like figure, who takes the shape of a dinosaur, a mollusc, a steamer captain and a moon milk gatherer, among others. This is the first complete edition in English of Italo Calvino's funny, whimsical and delightful stories, which blend scientific fact, flights of fancy, parody and wordplay to show the strangeness and the wonders of the world. Italo Calvino (1923-1985), one of Italy's finest postwar writers, has delighted readers around the world with his deceptively simple, fable-like stories. Calvino was born in Cuba and raised in San Remo, Italy; he fought for the Italian Resistance from 1943-45. Among his other works published in Penguin Modern Classics are Italian Folktales, Hermit in Paris, Into the War, The Path to the Spiders' Nests, Numbers in the Dark, Six Memos for the Next Millennium and Why Read the Classics? If you liked The Complete Cosmicomics, you might enjoy Jorge Luis Borges' Fictions, also available in Penguin Modern Classics. 'The complete and definitive collection ... a masterpiece' Gilbert Adair, Evening Standard 'Dazzling ... a book of revelation' Tim Adams, Observer 'If you have never read Cosmicomics, you have before you the most joyful reading experience of your life' Salman Rushdie 'A landmark in fiction, the work of a master' Ursula K Le Guin, Guardian

Set in Italy in the summer of 1940, this trio of stories explores the relationships between the different generations caught up in the war as well as Calvino's own experiences as a teenager. In the title story, 'Into the War', we are given an insight into what life was really like for those too young to be conscripted into Mussolini's army, while in 'The Avanguardisti in Menton', Calvino and his friends take a revealingly anti-climactic trip to the garrisoned French town of Menton, the sole Italian conquest of the early months of the conflict. The final story, 'UNPA Nights', is a touching, comic tale of friendship in a blackout, where the narrator's imagination wanders as he roams through the seedier parts of the darkened town instead of guarding the school buildings. Into the War is Calvino at his autobiographical best, combining brilliantly recollected memory with compelling wit and perfect prose.

This is the first collection in English of the extraordinary letters of one of the great writers of the twentieth century. Italy's most important postwar novelist, Italo Calvino (1923-1985) achieved worldwide fame with such books as "Cosmicomics," "Invisible Cities," and "If on a Winter's Night a Traveler." But he was also an influential literary critic, an important literary editor, and a masterful letter writer whose correspondents included Umberto Eco, Primo Levi, Gore Vidal, Leonardo Sciascia, Natalia Ginzburg, Michelangelo Antonioni, Pier Paolo Pasolini, and Luciano Berio. This book includes a generous selection of about 650 letters, written between World War II and the end of Calvino's life. Selected and introduced by Michael Wood, the letters are expertly rendered into English and annotated by well-known Calvino translator Martin McLaughlin.

The letters are filled with insights about Calvino's writing and that of others; about Italian, American, English, and French literature; about literary criticism and literature in general; and about culture and politics. The book also provides a kind of autobiography, documenting Calvino's Communism and his resignation from the party in 1957, his eye-opening trip to the United States in 1959-60, his move to Paris (where he lived from 1967 to 1980), and his trip to his birthplace in Cuba (where he met Che Guevara). Some lengthy letters amount almost to critical essays, while one is an appropriately brief defense of brevity, and there is an even shorter, reassuring note to his parents written on a scrap of paper while he and his brother were in hiding during the antifascist Resistance.

This is a book that will fascinate and delight Calvino fans and anyone else interested in a remarkable portrait of a great writer at work.

Why Read the Classics? is an elegant defence of the value of great literature by one of the finest authors of the last century. Beginning with an essay on the attributes that define a classic (number one - classics are those books that people always say they are 'rereading', not 'reading'), this is an absorbing collection of Italo Calvino's witty and passionate criticism.

Petrarch was Italy's second most famous writer (after Dante), and indeed from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries he was much better known and more influential in English literature than Dante. His Italian love lyrics constituted the major influence on European love poetry for at least two centuries from 1400 to 1600, and in Britain he was imitated by Chaucer, the Elizabethans, and other lyric poets up until the end of the eighteenth century. With Romanticism Dante ousted Petrarch from his pre-eminent position, but in our post-Romantic age, attention has now started to swing back to Petrarch.
This volume is the most comprehensive and up to date survey of Petrarch's literary legacy in Britain. Starting with his own views of those whom he called the "barbari Britanni," the volume then explores a number of key topics: Petrarch's analysis of the self; his dialogue with other classical and Italian authors; Petrarchism and anti-Petrarchism in Renaissance Italy; Petrarchism in England and Scotland; and Petrarch's modern legacy in both Italy and Britain. Many important texts and poets are considered, including Giordano Bruno, Leopardi, Foscolo, Ascham, Sidney, Spenser, and Walter Savage Landor.
The twenty chapters collected here are written by major scholars of Petrarch in the UK and Italy and will be essential reading for scholars and students of both Italian and British literature, as well as comparative literature.

Numbers in the Dark is a collection of short stories covering the length of Italo Calvino's extraordinary writing career, from when he was a teenager to shortly before his death. They include witty allegories and wise fables; a town where everything has been forbidden apart from the game of tip-cat; a pitiable tribe watching the flight paths of guided missiles from outside their mud huts; a computer programmer considering the possible sequence of a series of brutal acts; and dialogues with Henry Ford, a Neanderthal and the gloomy, overthrown Montezuma ...

Pin is a bawdy, adolescent cobbler's assistant, both arrogant and insecure who - while the Second World War rages - sings songs and tells jokes to endear himself to the grown-ups of his town - particularly jokes about his sister, who they all know as the town's 'mattress'. Among those his sister sleeps with is a German sailor, and Pin dares to steal his pistol, hiding it among the spiders' nests in an act of rebellion that entangles him in the adults' war. Italo Calvino, one of Italy's finest postwar writers, has delighted readers around the world with his deceptively simple, fable-like stories. He was born in Cuba in 1923 and raised in San Remo, Italy; he fought for the Italian Resistance from 1943-45. His major works include Cosmicomics (1968), Invisible Cities (1972), and If on a winter's night a traveler (1979). He died in Siena in 1985. Martin L. McLaughlin is Professor of Italian and Fiat-Serena Professor of Italian Studies at the University of Oxford where he is a Fellow of Magdalen College. In addition to his published academic works he is the English translator of Umberto Eco and Italo Calvino among many others.

In this collection of essays and addresses delivered over the course of his illustrious career, Umberto Eco seeks "to understand the chemistry of [his] passion" for the word. From musings on Ptolemy and "the force of the false" to reflections on the experimental writing of Borges and Joyce, Eco's luminous intelligence and encyclopedic knowledge are on dazzling display throughout. And when he reveals his own ambitions and superstitions, his authorial anxieties and fears, one feels like a secret sharer in the garden of literature to which he so often alludes.
Remarkably accessible and unfailingly stimulating, this collection exhibits the diversity of interests and the depth of knowledge that have made Eco one of the world's leading writers.

This major testament by Italo Calvino is composed of of five strikingly elegant "memory exercises" about his life and work. The title piece, "The Road to San Giovanni," poignantly evokes his childhood home. "A Cinema-Goer's Autobiography" tells of his adolescence, when he was riveted by American films starring Gary COoper, Clark Gable, and others. "Memories of a Battle" is at once a reminiscence of his experience ina  partisan unit during World War II and a reflection on the rolse of real and imagined memories. ""La Poubelle Agréée"" is a Parisian set piece, and "From the Opaque" is essentially his writer's credo.
In "The Road to San Giovanni, " brilliantly translated by Tim Parks, the originality, grace, wit, and wisdom that we have come to associate with Calvino are everywhere on display.

A couple on an epicurean journey across Mexico are excited by the idea of a particular ingredient, suggested by ancient rituals of human sacrifice. Precariously balanced on his throne, a king is able only to listen to the sounds around him - sure that any deviation from their normal progression would mean the uprising of the conspirators that surround him. And three different men search desperately for the beguiling scents of lost women, from a Count visiting Madame Odile's perfumery, to a London drummer stepping over spent, naked bodies.

Italo Calvino once said that he preferred to give false details about his biography since he felt that even the genuine data of a writer's life shed no light on the creative work. But this volume of posthumously collected personal writings is the closest we will ever come to the autobiography of this most private of writers. The pieces collected here range from the early 1950s to his last interview, completed just before his sudden death in 1985. Apart from providing a glimpse into his own formative experiences and evolution as an author, Calvino's autobiographical writings also examine the major events of twentieth-century history from a very personal viewpoint. This volume is full of ideas on literature and other writers, all conveyed with the author's distinctive lightness and intelligence. Italo Calvino, one of Italy's finest postwar writers, has delighted readers around the world with his deceptively simple, fable-like stories. Calvino was born in Cuba in 1923 and raised in San Remo, Italy; he fought for the Italian Resistance from 1943-45. His major works include Cosmicomics (1968), Invisible Cities (1972), and If on a winter's night a traveler (1979). He died in Sienna in 1985.

Essential passages form the works of more than 100 fifteenth-and sixteenth-century thinkers and writers, including Erasmus, Cervantes, Boccaccio, Montaigne, Bodin, Dürer, Machiavelli, Guicciardini, Rabelais, Leonardo, Cellini, Copernicus, Galileo, Savonarola, Luther, and Calvin.

Transmissions of Memory: Echoes, Traumas and Nostalgia in Post-World War II Italian Culture discusses cultural products-films, poetry, fiction, architectural buildings, autobiographical writing, and social media-to individuate through them the dynamics of memory. The field of analysis is Italian culture from World War II to the contemporary times, and the volume has in a gendered approach one of its focuses, offering an encompassing view on cultural memory and highlighting the similarities between gendered revisitation and revisitation of the past. The volume is divided into three sections: cultural transmissions, fractured memories, and nostalgia. In the chapters herewith the study of memory through these forms hints at a sense of transformation and often enrichment or resilience, individual or collective, that values more the present and the future rather than the past.

Critical interest in biography and autobiography has never been higher. However, while life-writing flourishes in the UK, in Italy it is a less prominent genre. The twelve essays collected here are written against this backdrop, and address issues in biographical and autobiographical writing in Italy from the later nineteenth century to the present, with a particular emphasis on the interplay between individual lives and life-writing and the wider social and political history of Italy. The majority of essays focus on well-known writers (D'Annunzio, Svevo, Bontempelli, Montale, Levi, Calvino, Eco and Fallaci), and their varying anxieties about autobiographical writing in their work. This picture is rounded out by a series of studies of similar themes in lesser known figures: the critic Enrico Nencioni, the Welsh-Italian painter Llewellyn Lloyd and Italian writers and journalists covering the Spanish Civil War. The contributors, all specialists in their fields, are Antonella Braida, Charles Burdett, Jane Everson, John Gatt Rutter, Robert Gordon, Gwyn Griffith, Peter Hainsworth, Martin McLaughlin, Gianni Oliva, Giuliana Pieri, and Jon Usher. The volume is dedicated to John Woodhouse, on his seventieth birthday, and concludes with a bibliography of his writings.