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Translated by Stephen Sartarelli. This volume brings together all of Gianfranco Contini's essays on Dante. The collection opens with his Introduction to the Rime of Dante, a text he wrote in 1938 that has remained a point of reference for Dantean exegesis ever since. It is followed by a close reading of a famous sonnet from La vita nuova; a portrait of Dante as both character and poet in the Divine Comedy; an essay on Dante's relevance to our times; a comprehensive critical survey he calls One Interpretation of Dante; a methodological analysis titled Philology and Dantean exegesis; a guide to the poetry of Cavalcanti, to his relations with Dante, and to his presence in the Divine Comedy; and close readings of two Cantos of the Divine Comedy, Inferno III and Paradiso XXVIII. A series of commentaries on specific questions concludes the volume, which stands as an ideal introduction to the Dantean universe.Literary Nonfiction.

The two stories presented in this volume focus on post-adolescent men (and, in ONE YEAR OF SCHOOL, a charismatic young woman) who are struggling with the distressing aspects of an existence they are just beginning to confront. In ONE YEAR OF SCHOOL these issues, which include the recognition of the precarious nature of life and its ultimate finitude, are wrestled with collectively by an entire class of students, while in THE ISLAND they are dealt with by the slightly older and painfully solitary central character of the tale. The rhythm or lyrical tone of the two stories is quite different as well. That of the pulsating ONE YEAR OF SCHOOL might be described as an andante agitato, while that of THE ISLAND is instead a pensive lento elegiaco.Fiction.

Literary Nonfiction. Philosophy. Sociology. Political Science. Translated by Thomas Haskell Simpson. A philosophical investigation into freedom as reality's point of origin, the metaphysical quality of being. The main thesis of this essay is anchored in a re-evaluation of Luigi Pareyson's reflections on the ontology of freedom. To the Italian philosopher are dedicated the first and fourth chapter, the latter focusing on his ideas on the genesis of evil. The second and third chapter use current scientific knowledge to retrace the presence of freedom at the birth of the universe and during its evolution (chapter 2), as well as in the world of biology (chapter 3). The sixth and final chapter, through an analysis of episodes taken from the Pentateuch (Moses, Abraham, Eden), reconstructs the idea of freedom as it emerges from the Bible.

Literary Nonfiction. Translated by Mimi C. Newton. Since her death in 1962, Marilyn Monroe has generated a plethora of narratives and an industry of images that portray her as everything from the embodiment of a dream to a self-destructive heroine. Rejecting the familiar tropes of a dificult upbringing, volatile depression, professional insecurity, and tempestuous affairs and marriages, PORTRAIT OF A SHOOTING STAR reveals what really lies behind the brilliance and the mysteries of one of the most iconic women of the twentieth century. Shedding light on her desire to be treated as an intellectual equal, this work highlights her determination not to be cast as a victim. In describing her progress through the worlds of cinema, photography, and theater, Marie-Magdeleine Lessana has drawn out the unseen threads of Marilyn's life and enduring significance, honing in on something crucial and all too often forgotten: her own agency and her grasp of the truth.

Poetry. Edited by Gianluca Rizzo. Translated by Gianluca Rizzo and Dominic Siracusa. Mariano Bàino's is among the most interesting poetry to be published at the end of last century; it is constantly straddling the border between different linguistic codes and is capable of reaching the reader without compromising the complexity of its experimentation, continuing a tradition whose immediate predecessors are the neo-avant-garde of Novissimi and Gruppo 63.--from the Introduction by Gianluca Rizzo

Literary Nonfiction. At the time this anthology was being conceived an explicit tendency towards a new poetics did not exist. A group of poets had not rallied around the project of a new style. Nor did I ever have the intention to put one together. I simply had identified the formative nucleus shared by certain authors, extremely different one from the other, who had arrived at their own programmatic ideas independent of each other. I called that nucleus: schizomorphic vision. This means: to intensify the expression of discontinuity in the imaginative process, to employ a ruptured syntax and weave dissonant propositions within a completely semanticized metric texture. It means: to give a rhythm to heterogeneous lexicons, to the short circuiting of events, to the perpetually disturbed nexuses of reality. Naturally, this was the critical invention that enabled me to put together five authors as disparate as we were; and that enabled me to write my best poems after the anthology appeared. The schizomorphic vision was not an expedient, was not a gimmick. It was the only serious way to tie method and madness into a single knot. The only psychological, psychiatric, philosophical, historical way possible. And poetically appropriate.--Alfredo Giuliani

Literary Nonfiction. Essays in English and Italian, on the fiftieth anniversary since the foundation of Gruppo 63.On October 17th 2013, a group of young scholars and writers gathered in Los Angeles to commemorate another meeting (a much more fateful one) that had taken place in Palermo fifty years earlier, on October 3rd 1963 to be exact, at the Hotel Zagarella and the Sala Scarlatti of the Conservatorio. Back then, the main attraction had been the Festival Internazionale della Musica Nuova, a long-established music festival that had brought to Sicily some of the most interesting experiments from all over the world. An investigation on the latest developments in contemporary literature, the organizers thought, would have made a nice addition to the events already planned: it was the beginning of the 'avant-garde by wagon-lit, ' as Umberto Eco famously (and humorously) dubbed it. Fifty years later, and over ten thousand miles away, that same avant-garde is still inspiring a lively discussion, the end of the line being nowhere in sight.