Internationally known during her lifetime, Laura Battiferra (1523-89) was a gifted and prolific poet in Renaissance Florence. The author of nearly 400 sonnets remarkable for their subtlety, intricate narrative structure, and learned allusions, Battiferra, who was married to the prominent sculptor and architect Bartolomeo Ammannati, traversed an elite literary and artistic network, circulating her verse in a complex and intellectually fecund exchange with some of the most illustrious figures in Italian history. In this bilingual anthology, Victoria Kirkham gathers Battiferra's most essential...

Although Francesco Petrarca (1304-74) is best known today for cementing the sonnet's place in literary history, he was also a philosopher, historian, orator, and one of the foremost classical scholars of his age. Petrarch: A Critical Guide to the Complete Works is the only comprehensive, single-volume source to which anyone--scholar, student, or general reader--can turn for information on each of Petrarch's works, its place in the poet's oeuvre, and a critical exposition of its defining features. A sophisticated but accessible handbook that illuminates Petrarch's love of classical...

Long celebrated as one of the Three Crowns of Florence, Giovanni Boccaccio (1313 75) experimented widely with the forms of literature. His prolific and innovative writings which range beyond the novella, from lyric to epic, from biography to mythography and geography, from pastoral and romance to invective became powerful models for authors in Italy and across the Continent.This collection of essays presents Boccaccio s life and creative output in its encyclopedic diversity. Exploring a variety of genres, Latin as well as Italian, it provides short descriptions of all his works, situates them...