Dante's Vita Nova (circa 1292-1295) depicts the joys and sorrows, the discoveries and conflicts of Dante's early love for Beatrice-who would achieve later and even greater fame in Commedia-starting with his first sighting of her and culminating in his prevision of Beatrice among the beatified in heaven. Award-winning translator and poet Andrew Frisardi channels the vigor and nuance of Dante's first masterpiece for a modern audience. The "little book," as Dante calls it, consists of thirty-one lyric po ems-mostly sonnets-embedded in a prose narrative, which both re counts an apparently autobiographical set of events also evoked in the poems and offers analysis of the poems' construction in the medieval critical tradition of divisio textus, or division of the text. Dante selected poetry he had written before age twenty-eight or so and wrote the prose to shape it into a story. The poems anthologize Dante's growth as a poet, from the influence of his earliest mentors to the stylistic and thematic breakthroughs of his poetic coming-of-age. The interplay of poetry and prose in Vita Nova, along with the fur ther distinction in the latter between autobiography and critical divisioni, presents a particular challenge for any translator. Frisardi faithfully voices the complex meter and rhyme schemes of the poetry while capturing the tone of each of the prose styles. His introduction and in-depth annotations provide additional context for the twenty-first-century reader.

About the Author
Supreme Poet, Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) wrote what most consider the greatest literary work composed in the Italian language and what is perhaps the greatest work of the Middle Ages, the Commedia. Andrew Frisardi is a writer, translator, and editor who resides in Orvieto, Italy. His translation of the selected poems of Giuseppe Ungaretti won the 2003 Raiziss/de Palchi Translation Award.


Book Information
ISBN 9780810127210
Author Andrew Frisardi
Format Paperback
Page Count 408
Imprint Northwestern University Press
Publisher Northwestern University Press
Weight(grams) 578g