Decameron Giovanni Boccaccio  A brilliant new translation of the work that Herman Hesse called “the first great masterpiece of European storytelling.”
In the summer of 1348, with the plague ravaging Florence, ten young men and women take refuge in the countryside, where they entertain themselves with tales of love, death, and corruption, featuring a host of characters, from lascivious clergymen and mad kings to devious lovers and false miracle-makers. Named after the Greek for “ten days,” Boccaccio’s book of stories draws on ancient mythology, contemporary history, and everyday life, and has influenced the work of myriad writers who came after him.
J. G. Nichols’s new translation, faithful to the original but rendered in eminently readable modern English, captures the timeless humor of one of the great classics of European literature.The Eaten Heart: Unlikely Tales of Love Giovanni BoccaccioLove can be surprising. Love can be heartbreaking. Love can be an art. But love is the singular emotion that all humans rely on most . . . and crave endlessly, no matter what the cost. United by this theme of love, the nine titles in the Penguin Great Loves collection include tales of blissful and all-encompassing, doomed and tragic, erotic and absurd, seductive and adulterous, innocent and murderous love. A deeply moving addition to the Penguin Great Ideas and Great Journeys series, each gorgeously packaged book will challenge all expectations of love while celebrating the beauty of its existence.
All books in this series: Cures for Love
Doomed Love
The Eaten Heart
First Love
Forbidden Fruit
The Kreutzer Sonata
A Mere Interlude
Of Mistresses, Tigresses and Other Conquests
The Seducers DiaryLife of Dante Giovanni BoccaccioLeonardo Bruni’s Life of Dante, extracts from Giovanni Villani’s Florentine Chronicles and Filippo Villani’s Life of Dante, as well as documents preserved in a manuscript of Boccaccio are combined in this impressive volume, and together they provide a wealth of insight and information into Dante’s unique character and life. They address the author’s susceptibility to the torments of passionate love, his involvement in politics, his scholastic enthusiasms, military experience, and the stories behind the greatest heights of his poetic achievements. Not only are these accounts invaluable for their subject matter, they are also seminal examples of early biographical writing. Also included in this expansive collection is a biography of Boccaccio himself.On Famous Women Giovanni Boccaccio, Guido A. GuarinoBoccaccio's "On Famous Women" ("De claris mulieribus") is a remarkable work that contains the lives of one hundred and six women in myth and history, ranging from Eve to Boccaccio's contemporary, Queen Giovanna I of Naples. It is the first collection of women's biographies ever written. Boccaccio composed it at Certaldo in 1361/62 and revised it in various stages to the end of his life in 1375. He dedicated it to Andrea Acciaiuoli, countess of Altavilla in the kingdom of Naples and sister of Niccolò Acciaiuoli, the grand seneschal of Queen Giovanna I. In his preface the author states that the biographies of illustrious men had been written often by a number of excellent writers, and he cited his hero Petrarch's "Lives of Famous Men" ("De viris illustribus") as an example. No one, however, had ever done the same for women. Boccaccio therefore presents a wide variety of women from antiquity to his own time, offering their lives as both moral "exempla" and entertaining reading. Boccaccio is best known as the author of the "Decameron" in which he portrayed women among the "lieta brigata" of pleasure-seeking young aristocrats and among the various characters of their tales. But in these biographies we find more serious themes that became standards of the Renaissance: secular and religious life; politics and private life; fame, fortune and earthly power; advantage and adversity; women's character, virtues and vices; their social roles, individual talents and achievements. "On Famous Women" is the earliest source of women's biography in the West and has had a long and distinguished publication career and literary influence. Its impact can be seen in Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales," in Christine de Pizan's Livre de la cité des dames," and in the work of Spencer, Alonso de Cartagena and Thomas Elyot, among many others. Guido A. Guarino's translation is based on the edition of Mathias Apiarius, printed in Bern in 1539. This new edition includes the original woodcut illustrations of the 1539 Apiarius edition, a new bibliography and bibliographical essay. First English translation. 2nd revised edition.
Introduction, new bibliography.
310 pages, 14 illustrations. |
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