This excellent verse translation brings to English-language readers the great German epic poem that inspired Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. Written 800 years ago, the poem tells the sweeping story of the downfall of the Burgundians at the hands of the Huns and their King Attila. The translation underscores both the literary and historic value of the poem.

This elegantly written book—a major reinterpretation of Spain’s theater of kings in the Golden Age—examines Spanish drama’s complex relations with the culture of absolutism and the rise of the modern state.

When they first met in 1794, shortly after the Reign of Terror, Germaine de Staël and Benjamin Constant were both in their twenties, both married, and both outsiders. She was already celebrated and a published writer, whereas he, though ambitious, was unknown. This compelling dual biography tells the extraordinary story of their union and disunion, set against a European background of momentous...

This book offers a new perspective on the fraught processes through which Spain has attempted to construct a national identity from the Enlightenment to the present day. Cultural critic Susan Martin-Márquez focuses on the nation’s ambivalence toward its Islamic/African legacy to illuminate the complexities and disorientations of modern Spanish identity.

In this groundbreaking study, unique in English, Joseph Luzzi considers Italian Romanticism and the modern myth of Italy. Ranging across European and international borders, he examines the metaphors, facts, and fictions about Italy that were born in the Romantic age and continue to haunt the global literary imagination.

This lavishly illustrated book explores medieval Castilian culture and the Arabic, Hebrew, and Christian strands that are inextricably woven into its fabric. The authors paint a vivid portrait of the culture through its arts, architecture, poetry and prose, all enriched by dynamic interaction with disparate cultures and peoples.

In this monumental work of literary history and criticism, Italian critic Francesco Orlando explores Western literature’s obsession with outmoded and nonfunctional objects--ruins, obsolete machinery, trash, etc. He roams across centuries, languages, and genres, tracing the obsession to an eighteenth-century turning point when functionality became a dominant value.

In this monumental work of literary history and criticism, Italian critic Francesco Orlando explores Western literature’s obsession with outmoded and nonfunctional objects--ruins, obsolete machinery, trash, etc. He roams across centuries, languages, and genres, tracing the obsession to an eighteenth-century turning point when functionality became a dominant value.

Rolena Adorno investigates the works of Spanish and Amerindian writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries—Bartolomé de las Casas in particular—and argues that the debates over the Spanish conquests have resonated in Latin American literature ever since.

A complete man of letters, Kornei Chukovsky stood for several decades at the center of the Russian literary milieu and knew virtually everyone involved in twentieth-century Russian literature. His extensive diaries, for the first time translated into English, provide a candid commentary on fifty years among Soviet literati and their predicament under a totalitarian regime.

This diary by the famed twentieth-century Russian writer—now available in English for the first time—recounts Babel’s experiences with the Cossack cavalry during the Polish-Soviet war of 1919-1920. The basis for Red Cavalry, Babel’s best-known work, it records the devastation of the war, the extreme cruelty of the Polish and Red armies alike toward the Jewish population in the Ukraine and e...

First published in Paris in 1511, The Praise of Folly has enjoyed enormous and highly controversial success from the author’s lifetime down to our own day. The Folly has no rival, except perhaps Thomas More’s Utopia, as the most intense and lively presentation of the literary, social, and theological aims and methods of Northern Humanism. Clarence H. Miller’s hig...

This rich anthology of contemporary Italian fiction in English presents short stories and excerpts from novels that were originally published in Italian between 1975 and 2001. Each selection is accompanied by a short introduction and biography of the writer, and there is also a comprehensive general introduction to recent Italian literary trends.

Among the most influential novels of all time, Cervantes’ Don Quixote remains as appealing today as when it was written four hundred years ago. This book is an original and beautifully written literary excursion into Cervantes’ masterpiece, how he came to write it, and how it has influenced great writers and thinkers across centuries and continents.

Legal developments during Spain’s Golden Age not only transformed the country into a modern state, they also irrevocably changed Western literature. This fascinating book explores Cervantes’s work to show how the author drew on new legal records to investigate human deviance and desire and as inspiration for modern representations of love.

Legal developments during Spain’s Golden Age not only transformed the country into a modern state, they also irrevocably changed Western literature. This fascinating book explores Cervantes’s work to show how the author drew on new legal records to investigate human deviance and desire and as inspiration for modern representations of love.

Perhaps more than any other writer, Franz Kafka jolted twentieth-century consciousness. This compelling biography of the great Czech novelist, diarist, and short story writer chronicles Kafka’s entire life, offering new insights into the enigmatic genius and his unsettling works. The book is the first to address the importance of Kafka’s complex relationship with his father.

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Norman R. Shapiro here presents a collection of superb new translations of more than 150 poems by the three most highly acclaimed French Renaissance poets—Clément Marot, Joachim Du Bellay, and Pierre de Ronsard. The original French lyric poems—some well-known, others less familiar—appear alongside Shapiro’s creative and spirited English translations.

Les Femmes et la tradition littéraire, a two-part anthology, offers a sweeping historical overview of women’s literature in France from the twelfth century to the present. Generously illustrated and richly annotated, it presents writers such as Hélisenne de Crenne, Gabrielle de Villeneuve, Louise Ackermann and Renée Vivien along with more familiar figures including Labé, Lafayette, Sand, Be...

This second volume of Les Femmes et la Tradition Littéraire encompasses women’s literature in France from the nineteenth century to the present day. Presenting the work of writers both famous and little-known, the anthology introduces each writer, annotates each selection, and offers analyses of the roles the writings have played in French literature and culture.  

 

Surrealism was perhaps the most prominent avant-garde movement of the twentieth century, and its most famous arbiter, André Breton, wrote extensively about the history and nature of the movement. This volume examines the works and theories of an array of writers, artists, and thinkers who engage in dialogue with Breton’s surrealism.

Arp’s renown as a foremost artist and sculptor of the 20th century has overshadowed the fact that he considered himself above all a poet. This groundbreaking book reveals that Arp’s practices as painter, poet, and sculptor are not only complementary but mutually dependent facets of a coherent aesthetic strategy.

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