The Oxford Companion to Italian Literature (Oxford Companions)

An entirely new volume in the Oxford Companion series this Companion toItalian Literature is based on a broad view of what constitutes literature covering historical writing travel writing theatre and philosophy as well asobvious genres such as the novel poetry literary dialogues and associatedcriticism and critical theory It embraces the whole of Italian literature from1200 to 2000 giving generous space to canonical figures from Dante and Petrarchto Montale and Calvino and containing a wealth of short entries on significantminor figures Italian dialect literature is given the attention it fullydeserves as is the literature written in Latin by Italian authors that was amajor feature of Renaissance culture The Companion s 2 400alphabetically arranged entries provide clear up to date and attractivecoverage of the subject and aim to serve the needs of both specialists andnon specialists alike The entries are written by expert contributors from the UK Italy America andAustralia and reflect the current state of international scholarship which hasdeveloped in many different and exciting directions in the course of the lasttwo or three decades Strong emphasis is given to contextual factors with asubstantial number of entries on the media from manuscripts to television linguistic history and the other arts as well as on social and politicalhistory all viewed in their relations to literary texts There is no comparablereference work either in English or in Italian Embracing the whole of Italian literature from the early thirteenth century to the present The Oxford Companion to Italian Literature takes a broad view of what constitutes literature covering historical writing travel writing theatre and philosophy as well as the novel poetry literary dialogues and critical theory Providing generous coverage of canonical figures from Dante and Petrarch to Montale and Calvino it also contains a wealth of short entries on significant mino