The Italian Novella

The novella was an important medieval and Renaissance prose narrative form that developed out of exempla and didactic literature and contributed to modern narrative forms. This is the first collection of essays dedicated to comprehensive scholarship on the Italian novella. The essays range from work on the Decameron , the epitome of the genre, to studies of sixteenth century authors who often utilized transgressive or sexual themes in their novellas.

This is the first book to provide a full treatment of Shakespeare's literary and theatrical engagement with the Italian novella and female agency.

The novella was an important medieval and Renaissance prose narrative form that developed out of exempla and didactic literature and contributed to modern narrative forms. This is the first collection of essays dedicated to comprehensive scholarship on the Italian novella. The essays range from work on the Decameron , the epitome of the genre, to studies of sixteenth century authors who often utilized transgressive or sexual themes in their novellas.

Hannah and her sister, Megan, have been given the trip of a lifetime. They are cruising the Mediterranean Sea. Starting at Rome, they are working their way counter-clockwise through Florence, Monte Carlo, Barcelona, Sardinia, Sicily, and Pompeii. Life is their playground. And then Hannah meets Brandon. Brandon is strong, intelligent, loyal, and everything Hannah could possibly dream of in a man. He has also just walked in on his fiancee in bed with his best friend. Hannah is willing to wait as long as it takes for him to work his way through this betrayal. And then all Hell breaks loose ... Half of the author's proceeds of all Ophelia Sikes books benefit battered women's shelters. Love's Heat is the first novella in the Italian Nights series. Due to the strong sexual content and adult situations, this book is recommended for readers aged 17+. The first four novellas have cliff-hanger endings, which lead to the final novella with a happily-ever-after. I come from a family which adores Italy. My parents strive to go every year, and I’ve been several times there myself. I took this very cruise through the Mediterranean Sea and wrote my notes while I traveled. The sights, sounds, aromas, and atmosphere of this exotic region are just as I personally experienced them. If you haven’t been to Italy, Monaco, Spain, or France, I highly recommend it. Even if you have to save a little each year to make it a trip of a lifetime, it is well worth it. These locations are the cradle of civilization. The art, food, and culture created here resonate throughout time. In the meantime, enjoy this virtual vacation written from my first-hand experiences!

Elizabeth Spencer is captivated by Italy. Collected in this volume are The Light in the Piazza, which is her signature piece, and six other Italian tales in which her American characters encounter and respond to the mysteries of Italian mores.

'Rich. . . eclectic. . . a feast' Telegraph This landmark collection brings together forty writers that reflect over a hundred years of Italy's vibrant and diverse short story tradition, from the birth of the modern nation to the end of the twentieth century. Poets, journalists, visual artists, musicians, editors, critics, teachers, scientists, politicians, translators: the writers that inhabit these pages represent a dynamic cross section of Italian society, their powerful voices resonating through regional landscapes, private passions and dramatic political events. This wide-ranging selection curated by Jhumpa Lahiri includes well known authors such as Italo Calvino, Elsa Morante and Luigi Pirandello alongside many captivating new discoveries. More than a third of the stories featured in this volume have been translated into English for the first time, several of them by Lahiri herself.

'Thus she was decapitated, and this was the end to which she was brought by her unbridled lusts.' For over two centuries after Boccaccio's groundbreaking Decameron, the Italian novella exercised a crucial influence over European prose fiction. With thirty-nine stories by nineteen authors, many translated for the first time, this anthology presents tales from the whole genre and period. Here we meet a rich cast of humble peasants and shrewd craftsmen, frustrated wives, libidinous friars, ill-fated lovers, and vengeful nobles. These works had a considerable impact in English, and the selection includes tales that have provided sources for Chaucer, Shakespeare, Webster, Marston, Dryden, Byron and Keats. The typical novella is situated in a precise time and place and features people who either existed historically or are presumed to have done so. The subject-matter, whether ribald or sentimental, comic or tragic, often reflects the social and economic conditions of its age and thus the novella has been seen as a crucial stage in the development of fictional realism and the emergence of the novel

This collection of thirteen essays brings together Italian and American scholars to present a cooperative analysis of the Italian short story, beginning in the fourteenth century with Giovanni Boccaccio and arriving at the twentieth century with Alberto Moravia and Anna Maria Ortese. Throughout the book, the contributors carefully and intentionally unpack and explain the development of the short story genre and demonstrate the breadth of themes – cultural, historical and linguistic – detailed in these narratives. Dedicated to a genre “devoted to lightness and flexibility, as well as quickness, exactitude, visibility and multiplicity,” this collection paints a careful and exacting picture of an important part of both Italian and literary history.

Finally back in print, a frighteningly lucid feminist horror story about marriage The Dry Heart begins and ends with the matter-of-fact pronouncement: “I shot him between the eyes.” As the tale—a plunge into the chilly waters of loneliness, desperation, and bitterness—proceeds, the narrator's murder of her flighty husband takes on a certain logical inevitability. Stripped of any preciousness or sentimentality, Natalia Ginzburg's writing here is white-hot, tempered by rage. She transforms the unhappy tale of an ordinary dull marriage into a rich psychological thriller that seems to beg the question: why don't more wives kill their husbands?