Remarkably accessible and unfailingly stimulating, this collection of essays exhibits the diversity of interests and the depth of knowledge that made Umberto Eco one of the world's leading writers. From musings on Ptolemy and reflections on the experimental writing of Borges and Joyce, to revelations of his own authorial ambitions and fears, Eco's luminous intelligence is on display throughout. This volume will appeal to anyone interested in how new light is shed on old masters by a great contemporary mind.
Italo Calvino once said that he preferred to give false details about his biography since he felt that even the genuine data of a writer's life shed no light on the creative work. But this volume of posthumously collected personal writings is the closest we will ever come to the autobiography of this most private of writers. The pieces collected here range from the early 1950s to his last interview, completed just before his sudden death in 1985. Apart from shedding light on his own formative experiences and evolution as an author, Calvino's autobiographical writings also examine the major events of twentieth-century history from a very personal viewpoint. This volume is, as ever, full of ideas on literature and other writers, all conveyed with the author's distinctive lightness and intelligence.
In these three witty and fantastical stories, Italo Calvino explores the sensory aptitudes of the body in taste, hearing and smell. 'Each story continues Calvino's lifelong campaign to add more territory to the empire of the imagination; each discloses marvels in regions that we presumed exhausted' Time 'In all three stories, intellectual keenness accompanies intense receptiveness to sensuous nuance' Sunday Times
One of the high-points of Italian Renaissance humanism, Machiavelli's The Prince immediately transcended the time and culture from which it had sprung, circulating throughout Europe and paving the road to an astonishing variety of discussions on power and liberty for centuries to come. Indeed, one could hardly think of a literary work whose reception has been more controversial and arguably more crucial to the fashioning of modernity. This volume gathers together the proceedings of a conference held in Oxford, in November 2013, to mark the 500th anniversary of the composition of The Prince. It explores pivotal aspects of the text's complex identity, focusing on three interrelated areas: 1. The Prince's own ways of appropriating ancient and modern traditions of political thought and ethics; 2. the textual history and interpretive details of the work; 3. translations of the treatise into foreign languages (including English and other translations), with their cultural adaptations and reconceptualizations of the original. All chapters offer highly original insights by leading experts on The Prince, shedding light on hitherto neglected topics and locating Machiavelli's masterpiece in an intriguing network of intersecting perspectives.
