Thoughts


Book Description

Still unfinished at the time of his death, Thoughts, now in its first English translation, represents Giacomo Leopardi’s urgent desire to organize his lifetime’s observations of mankind, life, and the world. Written by the greatest Italian poet and thinker of the 19th century, these timeless musings contain immense philosophical and psychological insight. Ranging from mankind to nature, social order to the individual soul, they reveal a man of brilliance struggling to reconcile all that he sees around him.




Zibaldone


Book Description

A groundbreaking translation of the epic work of one of the great minds of the nineteenth century Giacomo Leopardi was the greatest Italian poet of the nineteenth century and was recognized by readers from Nietzsche to Beckett as one of the towering literary figures in Italian history. To many, he is the finest Italian poet after Dante. (Jonathan Galassi's translation of Leopardi's Canti was published by FSG in 2010.) He was also a prodigious scholar of classical literature and philosophy, and a voracious reader in numerous ancient and modern languages. For most of his writing career, he kept an immense notebook, known as the Zibaldone, or "hodge-podge," as Harold Bloom has called it, in which Leopardi put down his original, wide-ranging, radically modern responses to his reading. His comments about religion, philosophy, language, history, anthropology, astronomy, literature, poetry, and love are unprecedented in their brilliance and suggestiveness, and the Zibaldone, which was only published at the turn of the twentieth century, has been recognized as one of the foundational books of modern culture. Its 4,500-plus pages have never been fully translated into English until now, when a team under the auspices of Michael Caesar and Franco D'Intino of the Leopardi Centre in Birmingham, England, have spent years producing a lively, accurate version. This essential book will change our understanding of nineteenth-century culture. This is an extraordinary, epochal publication.




Why Trilling Matters


Book Description

Lionel Trilling, regarded at the time of his death in 1975 as America's preeminent literary critic, is today often seen as a relic of a vanished era. His was an age when literary criticism and ideas seemed to matter profoundly in the intellectual life of the country. In this eloquent book, Adam Kirsch shows that Trilling, far from being obsolete, is essential to understanding our current crisis of literary confidence--and to overcoming it.By reading Trilling primarily as a writer and thinker, Kirsch demonstrates how Trilling's original and moving work continues to provide an inspiring example of a mind creating itself through its encounters with texts. "Why Trilling Matters" introduces all of Trilling's major writings and situates him in the intellectual landscape of his century, from Communism in the 1930s to neoconservatism in the 1970s. But Kirsch goes deeper, addressing today's concerns about the decline of literature, reading, and even the book itself, and finds that Trilling has more to teach us now than ever before. As Kirsch writes, "Trilling's essays are not exactly literary criticism" but, like all literature, "ends in themselves."




The Latin American Literary Boom and U.S. Nationalism During the Cold War


Book Description

How the dissemination of Latin American literature in the U.S. was "caught between the desire to support the literary revolution of the Boom writers and the fear of revolutionary politics" (John King).




Giacomo Leopardi’s Search For A Common Life Through Poetry


Book Description

This book traces the life of Giacomo Leopardi by examining four different yet interrelated aspects: his social origins and class in relation to his evolving conception of nobility; the mixture of idealism and misogynism in his attitude toward women and in his conception of love; his poems and prose on the theme of Italian independence; and his philosophical materialism as expressed in his poetry, intellectual diary, and essays. Frank Rosengarten pays particular attention to the ways in which the thought of Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche illuminates Leopardi’s world view. He also devotes a section of the book to the different personal, moral, and philological components of Leopardi’s humanism. Throughout, he maintains a sharp focus on the connections between Leopardi’s life and the historical period in which he lived. The major themes and human concerns expressed in Leopardi’s writings relate to his life experiences and to the historical period in which he lived. Of central interest are nobility and love, since Leopardi’s perception of these two themes evolved and changed as he acquired a more general and universal conception of life. This fascinating combination of classical and modern perspectives on life and literature is highlighted throughout the book.




The Poems of Leopardi


Book Description




Delphi Collected Works of Giacomo Leopardi (Illustrated)


Book Description

Regarded as the greatest Italian poet of the nineteenth century, Giacomo Leopardi was also a noted philosopher, essayist and philologist. A principal figure of Romanticism, Leopardi wrote poems that reveal a constant and sensitive reflection on existence and the human condition, characterised by a sensuous and materialist inspiration. Leopardi is widely seen as one of the most radical and challenging thinkers of his time, who produced a unique poetic body of lyrical works, confirming his status as a central figure of world literature. The Delphi Poets Series offers readers the works of literature’s finest poets, with superior formatting. This volume presents Leopardi’s collected works, with related illustrations and the usual Delphi bonus material. (Version 1) * Beautifully illustrated with images relating to Leopardi’s life and works * Concise introduction to Leopardi’s life and poetry * Two translations of Leopardi’s seminal collection of poems, ‘I Canti’. (Frederick Townsend, 1887 and Francis Henry Cliffe, 1893) * Includes the 1835 Italian text of ‘I Canti’ — ideal for students * Images of how the poetry books were first printed, giving your eReader a taste of the original texts * Excellent formatting of the poems * Easily locate the poems you want to read * Includes Leopardi’s prose works — Charles Edwardes’ translation of ‘Operette morali’, an important collection of dialogues and essays * Features a bonus biography * Scholarly ordering of texts into chronological order and literary genres Please visit www.delphiclassics.com to see our wide range of poet titles CONTENTS: The Life and Poetry of Giacomo Leopardi Brief Introduction: Giacomo Leopardi by William Dean Howells I Canti — Frederick Townsend translation, 1887 I Canti — Francis Henry Cliffe translation, 1893 I Canti — Original Italian Text, 1835 The Prose Essays and Dialogues (Translated by Charles Edwardes) The Biography Life of Leopardi by Francis Henry Cliffe Please visit www.delphiclassics.com to browse through our range of poetry titles or buy the entire Delphi Poets Series as a Super Set




Surrealism in Latin American Literature


Book Description

Charting surrealism in Latin American literature from its initial appearance in Argentina in 1928 to the surrealist-inspired work of several writers in the 1970s, Melanie Nicholson argues that surrealism has exercised a significant and positive influence over twentieth-century Latin American literature, particularly poetry.