Italian Studies
Deepen your knowledge of Italian culture and literature with this study guide collection covering Ancient Rome to the Renaissance to the present day.
Accidental Death of an Anarchist was first written and produced by playwright and actor Dario Fo in Italy, 1970. The script was directly inspired by the events surrounding the 1969 Piazza Fontana Bombing, and much of Fo’s work revolves around political satire directed at Italy post-World War II and later. Exemplifying Fo’s work as a writer, Accidental Death of an Anarchist combines the humor, irony, and satire of the old Italian tradition of commedia dell’arte... Read Accidental Death Of An Anarchist Summary
An epic poem composed by the Roman poet Virgil between the years of 29 and 19 BCE, the Aeneid represents one of the most important and influential works in Western literature. It centers on the story of Aeneas, a refugee from the Trojan War who was fated to found the Roman nation in Italy. This guide refers to the Oxford World Classic’s edition of the Aeneid, translated by Frederick Ahl. All study guide citations refer... Read Aeneid Summary
A Room with a View is a 1908 historical fiction/romance novel by British author E. M. Forster. The novel is split between Italy and England, telling the story of Lucy Honeychurch, a young and spirited middle-class Englishwoman who embarks on a journey of self-discovery during a trip to Italy. During her travels, Lucy falls in love with the free-spirited and unconventional George Emerson, a fellow tourist, but is later forced to choose between her heart's... Read A Room with a View Summary
Mark Sullivan’s Beneath a Scarlet Sky is a coming-of-age historical fiction novel that follows Pino Lella, a 17-year-old Milanese boy, as he navigates the dangers of Nazi-occupied Italy during the height of World War II. The novel is largely based on the real-life account of Pino Lella, who was an old man by the time he decided to share his story. Sullivan’s novel is based on Pino’s memories of events, interviews with Holocaust historians, Italian... Read Beneath a Scarlet Sky Summary
Written in 44 B.C. by Roman official, orator, and philosopher, Marcus Tullius Cicero, On Duties is a philosophical treatise on moral duty, or 'appropriateaction. 'It is written as a three-section letter, in lieu of a visit, to his son, Marcus Tullius Cicero Minor, who lived in Athens at the time, and was studying philosophy. Cicero wrote the letter in less than a month during the last year of his life. This text was written during... Read Cicero: On Duties Summary
The Consolation of Philosophy by Roman senator and philosopher Boethius is considered the last great philosophical work of the classical era and one of the foundational texts of medieval Christian thought. Anicius Boethius (c. 477-524 CE) was a philosopher and statesman in late Roman times, acting as advisor to the Gothic king Theodoric. Around 523, he was convicted of conspiracy and treason and sentenced to death. While in prison, and prior to his trial, he... Read Consolation Of Philosophy Summary
The Inferno is the first book of Dante Alighieri’s great medieval epic, The Divine Comedy: a monument of world literature. Written between 1308 and 1320, the three-part poem charts Dante’s transformative journey through Hell and Purgatory to Heaven itself. The poem’s form—terza rima, an endlessly circling pattern of interweaving triple rhymes—reflects its major theme: the wisdom, power, and love of the trinitarian Christian God. Like every book of the Comedy, Inferno ends with the word... Read Dante's Inferno Summary
In Giovanni and Lusanna: Love and Marriage in Renaissance Florence, published in 2004, historian Gene Brucker describes the events of a single relationship in fifteenth-century Florence. This “microhistory” of a romance and subsequent court trial demonstrates how Florentine society treated love, marriage, and social class.In Chapter 1, Brucker reveals that he learned of the relationship between Giovanni di Ser Lodovico della Casa and Lusanna di Girolamo through the records of the notary Ser Filippo Mazzei... Read Giovanni and Lusanna Summary
If on a winter’s night a traveler is a 1979 postmodernist novel by Italo Calvino. The dual narrative is composed of two parallel strands: numbered chapters in which the narrator directly describes to the audience the process of reading the book, and titled chapters constructed from hypothetical first chapters of various books that the audience is reading. The innovative novel has been praised by critics and hailed as highly influential.This guide uses the 1998 Vintage... Read If on a Winter's Night a Traveler Summary
If This Is a Man is a Holocaust memoir written by Primo Levi, first published by the small publishing house Francesco de Silva in 1947. The text was out of print by 1952. In June 1958, however, the publisher Enaudi, which had previously rejected the manuscript, republished it with slight revisions, and translations began to appear. Re-publication secured Levi’s status as a canonical writer of the Holocaust.This study guide refers to the English translation of... Read If This Is a Man Summary
Inferno by Dan Brown is the fourth installment in Brown’s Robert Langdon series of mystery/thriller novels, following (in order) Angels & Demons, The Da Vinci Code, and The Lost Symbol, and preceding Origin. Each edition covers a self-contained story, so readers need not follow the series in order, and often includes themes centered on European and Christian history and cultural traditions. The title character, Robert Langdon, is the only recurring character. Inferno won the Goodreads... Read Inferno Summary
Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino (1923-1985) was originally published in 1972 in Italian and translated into English in 1974. Calvino’s ninth novel, it received a Nebula Novel Award nomination in 1975.According to New York Times reviewer Joseph McElroy, Calvino already had the reputation of being Italy’s “most original storyteller” for his use of fantastical and fabulist motifs to explore philosophical and scientific themes such as evolution (McElroy). Invisible Cities continues this trend by using the... Read Invisible Cities Summary
Lives of the Saints (1990) by Nino Ricci is the first in a trilogy of novels about an Italian immigrant to Canada, Vittorio Innocente, and his family. The author, Nino Ricci, is the son of Italian immigrants who grew up in Leamington, Ontario, home to a large community of Italian immigrants. The novel is a coming-of-age story told in first-person narration that details Vittorio’s life growing up in an impoverished small town in Italy, and... Read Lives of the Saints Summary
Madam Butterfly is the English adaptation of the tragic Italian opera Madama Butterfly by Giacomo Puccini. It opened in Milan in 1904, and the orchestral score was first published in 1906 by Giulio Ricordi. Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa wrote the libretto (text of the opera). Puccini based his opera on the play by David Belasco and story by John Luther Long, as well as the novel Madame Chrysanthème by Pierre Loti. These sources, and... Read Madame Butterfly Summary
My Brilliant Friend is the first book in Italian writer Elena Ferrante’s world-acclaimed quartet of Neapolitan novels, which documents the friendship between Elena Greco and Lila Cerullo. It was originally published in 2011. Narrated in first person from Elena’s perspective, the novel opens with a present-day Prologue, in which Lila stages the ultimate disappearance. She not only vanishes in body but takes her possessions and cuts out her face from photographs, so as “to eliminate... Read My Brilliant Friend Summary
On the Nature of Things is a philosophical work by the Roman author Titus Lucretius Carus (whom we call “Lucretius”). It was written in the early 50s BC, in Latin. Though this is a work of science and philosophy, it is also a poem. This work provides a detailed description of Epicurean philosophy, which encompasses theories of atoms, cosmology, theology, and a wide variety of natural phenomena. It also addresses the nature of the mind... Read On The Nature Of Things Summary
On the Sublime is a treatise on aesthetics and literary criticism originally written in Greek between the first and third centuries AD. The author is not definitively known, but the text is typically credited with the name Longinus. Although the work has come to be known as On the Sublime in English, its subject is advice to writers on “the essentials of a noble and impressive style.” For this reason, G. M. A. Grube translates... Read On the Sublime Summary
One of the most important representatives of Renaissance philosophy, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola’s Oration on the Dignity of Man (De hominis dignitate) was presented as a public discourse in 1486 but never published in his lifetime; Pico died in 1494, two years before its initial publication.In his oration, Pico investigates mankind, finding that pure reason is the highest level that man can reach. Alone among creatures, man has a part of every other creature. This... Read Oration on the Dignity of Man Summary
Paradiso is the third and concluding part of The Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri’s three-part epic narrative poem. It completes the allegorical journey initiated by the first two parts, Inferno (Hell) and Purgatorio (Purgatory). Beatrice, who symbolizes Dante’s ideal woman and who had previously accompanied him through the past part of Purgatory, here accompanies him as he journeys through the nine levels or spheres of Heaven, which are represented by various celestial bodies. In each sphere... Read Paradiso Summary
Pompeii is a 2003 historical fiction novel by British author Robert Harris. The novel blends together the history of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD with a fictional plot about an engineer sent from Rome to repair the city’s aqueducts. This study guide uses an eBook version of the 2003 Ballantine Books edition. Plot SummaryMarcus Attilius Primus is a young aqueduct engineer, also known as an “aquarius.” His father and his grandfather were... Read Pompeii Summary
Purgatorio is the second of three poems that make up The Divine Comedy by Florentine statesman, poet, and philosopher Dante. In The Divine Comedy, Dante travels first through Hell (the poem Inferno), then through Purgatory (the poem Purgatorio), and finally through Heaven (the poem Paradiso). Purgatorio follows Dante on his journey from the shores of Purgatory, through the seven levels where penitents atone for the seven deadly sins, and into the Garden of Eden. The... Read Purgatorio Summary
Edith Wharton wrote “Roman Fever” near the end of a career that spanned more than five decades. Like many of her works, this 1934 short story investigates the social norms of affluent people from the US, considering the forms of violence these norms tolerate and even encourage. Spare in setting and restricted in action, the story shifts between the present and the past as it depicts a love triangle’s long reverberations. As the Roman backdrop... Read Roman Fever Summary
Six Characters in Search of an Author by Italian dramatist Luigi Pirandello was published in 1921 in a collection of plays called Naked Masks. The play was first performed in Italian; Edward Storer translated it into English in 1922, and it was first performed in London’s West End and New York City later that year. The play’s avant-garde and meta-theatrical elements make it a precursor to the Theatre of the Absurd, and Pirandello’s work inspired... Read Six Characters in Search of an Author Summary
Summa Theologica (originally Summa Theologiae) is the principal work of Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), an Italian friar, philosopher, and theologian and one of the central figures in medieval Christian thought. Aquinas wrote the Summa between 1265 and 1273, intending it to serve as a summation of all known theological learning for seminarians. He never finished the massive Latin work, but what he completed has influenced Roman Catholic theology and Western thought in general. Aquinas’ central... Read Summa Theologica Summary
Set in the Tuscan region of Italy in the 1800s, by Carlo Collodi’s classic children's fantasy novel The Adventures of Pinocchio (1883) follows the misadventures of a living wooden puppet and his poor puppeteer father. The story was initially published as a serial in a weekly children's magazine; due to reader demand, it was later turned into a book. The Adventures of Pinocchio, translated into more than 260 languages, is considered one of the most... Read The Adventures of Pinocchio Summary
The Aspern Papers by Henry James is a novella first published in The Atlantic Monthly in 1888. The unnamed protagonist and narrator is an editor and obsessive fan of fictional poet Jeffrey Aspern, who is no longer living. Having heard that a former romantic partner of Aspern’s, Juliana Bordereau, and her niece, Tita Bordereau (renamed Tina in later editions), are in possession a collection of papers related to the poet, the narrator rents rooms in... Read The Aspern Papers Summary
The Betrothed (I Promessi Sposi), published in 1827 and revised in 1842, is a historical novel by Italian author Alessandro Manzoni. The novel follows two young lovers, Renzo and Lucia, in 1600s Lombardy; their courtship is derailed by a jealous plot to prevent their marriage, ultimately leading them to the plague-stricken city of Milan, where they face many struggles. The Betrothed is heralded as one of the most important and widely read Italian novels. This... Read The Betrothed Summary
Baldassare Castiglione, an Italian courtier, diplomat, soldier, and prominent Renaissance author, wrote The Book of the Courtier between 1513 and 1527. Principally an instructive work, the book takes place over the course of four evenings in the Italian court of Urbino in 1507. To entertain themselves, the courtiers discuss the nature and traits of the ideal courtier, dealing with topics of individual morals, behavior, and etiquette, particularly in situations involving royalty.The book begins with a... Read The Book of the Courtier Summary
Marie-Henri Beyle, writing under his penname Stendhal, published his last complete work, the novel The Charterhouse of Parma, in French in 1839. It tells the story of an Italian nobleman who fights in the Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815) and then navigates the fraught political dynamics of the era known as the Italian Restoration (1814-1848). This was a time when the memory of revolution was repressed and power seemed to many to operate on caprice and intrigue... Read The Charterhouse of Parma Summary
This guide refers to the 2003 Penguin Classics edition, translated by Henry Bettenson and edited by G.R. Evans. Your page numbers may vary. Please note that this guide covers only Part 1 (Books 1-10) of the 22 books of City of God. Begun in 413 AD, only a few years after the Sack of Rome, City of God is Augustine’s rejoinder to pagan misconceptions of Christianity. In the aftermath of a disastrous and unprecedented attack... Read The City of God Summary
The Decameron is a collection of short stories by Italian author Giovanni Boccaccio, completed in 1353. The book was published in the wake of the Black Death, a bubonic plague which swept through Europe in the 14th century. The plague killed a large percentage of the population of Boccaccio’s native Florence. Boccaccio uses the epidemic as a key part of the book’s framing narrative, as in the book, a group of young Florentine men and... Read The Decameron Summary
In 1516, at the height of the Italian Renaissance, Niccolò Machiavelli pens his Discourses on Livy while in exile from his native city of Florence. The Discourses are Machiavelli’s commentaries on the republic of ancient Rome—how it is founded, maintained, and protected—and how Roman wisdom in the art of statecraft can be used by all republics.The Roman Republic is an early democracy that lasts from 509 BCE to 49 BCE. Roman scholar Titus Livius—“Livy”—first recorded... Read The Discourses Summary
First published in Italy in 1986 as I sommersi e i salvati, The Drowned and the Saved, is a collection of eight essays by Primo Levi about his experiences in the concentration camp at Auschwitz. The book was translated into English in 1988 by Raymond Rosenthal. Some critics categorize The Drowned and the Saved as a memoir, while others believe it to be an autobiography; still other critics name this book a treatise in which... Read The Drowned and the Saved Summary
The Enchantress of Florence is a 2008 magical-realist novel by Salman Rushdie. The story incorporates many fantastical, folkloric elements as it portrays life in the Mughal Empire and Renaissance Florence in the 16th century. In the novel, a mysterious European man arrives in the Mughal court with a story which can only be told to the emperor. Rushdie described the novel as his most heavily researched work and The Enchantress of Florence was praised by... Read The Enchantress Of Florence Summary
The Flamethrowers is a historical fiction novel published in 2013 by the American author Rachel Kushner. It follows the story of Reno, a young woman experiencing the turbulence of the 1970s in New York City. An aspiring artist, Reno finds herself in remarkable situations both in New York and abroad in Italy. Kushner weaves Italian and American history to highlight how people experience the implications of the societies and histories they inherit. Kushner subverts typical... Read The Flamethrowers Summary
