You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Italy, June 1300. In a disused church on the outskirts of Florence, the master craftsman, Ambrogio, is found murdered at the foot of an unfinished mosaic. A young Dante Alighieri, (future author of The Divine Comedy) the recently elected Prior to the City of Florence, is called upon to investigate. He learns that the church is being transformed into a university at the behest of the new Pope, Bonifacius VIII. Closer inspection reveals catacombs beneath the floor, populated with beggars and thieves, who speak of witchcraft and satanic rituals practised above. Meanwhile, the Church, on learning of Dante's involvement, begins to show an unusual interest in Ambrogio's fate. But Dante has one fur...
Or perhaps with another elusive Beatrice, the heiress to the imperial Swabian throne, whose rumored arrival in the city could upset the political aspirations of Pope Boniface, Dante's nemesis?"--BOOK JACKET.
Combining elements of medievalism, the historical novel and the detective narrative, medieval crime fiction capitalizes upon the appeal of all three--the most famous examples being Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose (one of the best-selling books ever published) and Ellis Peters' endearing Brother Cadfael series. Hundreds of other novels and series fill out the genre, in settings ranging from the so-called Celtic Enlightenment in seventh-century Ireland to the ruthless Inquisition in fourteenth-century France to the mean streets of medieval London. The detectives are an eclectic group, including weary ex-crusaders, former Knights Templar, enterprising monks and nuns, and historical poets such as Geoffrey Chaucer. This book investigates the enduring popularity of the largely unexamined genre and explores its social, cultural and political contexts.
This is the first account of Dante's reception in English to address full chronological span of that process. Individual authors and periods have been studied before, but Dante's British Public takes a wider and longer view, using a selection of vivid and detailed case studies to record and place in context some of the wider conversations about and appropriations of Dante that developed in Britain across more than six centuries, as access to his work extended and diversified. Much of the evidence is based on previously unpublished material in (for example) letters, journals, annotations and inventories and is drawn from archives in the UK and across the world, from Milan to Mumbai and from B...
Focusing on modern-day fiction set in the Middle Ages or that incorporates medieval elements, this study examines storytelling components and rhetorical tropes in more than 60 works in five languages by more than 40 authors. Medievalist fiction got its "postmodern" start with such authors as Calvino, Fuentes, Carpentier and Eco. Its momentum increased since the 1990s with writers whose work has received less critical attention, like Laura Esquivel, Tariq Ali, Matthew Pearl, Matilde Asensi, Ildefonso Falcones, Andrew Davison, Bernard Cornwell, Donnal Woolfolk Cross, Ariana Franklin, Nicole Griffith, Levi Grossman, Conn Iggulden, Edward Rutherfurd, Javier Sierra, Alan Moore and Brenda Vantrease. The author explores a wide range of "medievalizing" tropes, discusses the negative responses of postmodernism and posits four "hard problems" in medievalist fiction.
In The Plausible World , the intersections of literature and cartography enable readers to understand that place is anything but purely geographic: a plausible world is created as a strategy to fill the void. Innovative in his approach, Westphal challenges the view that perceptions and representations of space are stable or straightforward.
Italian Crime Fiction is the first study in the English language to focus specifically on Italian detective and noir fiction from the 1930s to the present. The eight chapters include studies on some of the founding fathers of the Italian tradition, and mainstream writers. The volume has a particular focus on the new generation of crime writers.
Accessible and informative account of Dante's great Commedia: its purpose, themes and styles, and its reception over the centuries.
A comprehensive guide to Dante’s life and literature, with an emphasis on his Commedia. This text looks at the influences that shaped Dante’s writing, and the reception of his work by later readers, from the 14th century to the present. Introduces Dante through four main approaches: the context of his life and career; his literary and cultural traditions; key themes, episodes and passages in his own work, especially the Commedia; and the reception and appropriation of his work by later readers, from the fourteenth century to the present Written by an expert Dante scholar Provides new translations of substantial passages from Dante’s poems and from the world of his contemporaries Includes explanatory diagrams of Dante’s 'other-worlds', and a section of illustrations by medieval and modern artists Builds a vivid and complex picture of Dante's imagination, intellect and literary presence Helpful bibliographies include relevant web resources
The crime genre entered Italy in the late nineteenth century, and if initially Italian authors followed models developed abroad—principally in the United States, England and France—a uniquely Italian brand began to emerge soon. Il giallo, as the crime genre has been known in Italy since the 1930s, proved to be the ideal instrument to confront pressing and often uncomfortable issues which were pertinent to the Italian context: it became a useful tool to restore, symbolically at least, the truth and justice that were, and still are, perceived by a large part of the Italian reading public to be systematically denied in reality. In today’s Italy, the crime genre, and particularly its noir ...