Alma Books Vita Nuova. Dual-Language Edition Alighieri Dante

As a young man, Proust wrote both poetry and prose. Even after he embarked on his masterful In Search of Lost Time at the age of thirty-eight, he never stopped writing poetry. His verse is often playful, filled with affection and satire, and is peppered with witty barbs at friends and people in his social circle of aristocrats, writers, musicians, and courtesans • Few of the poems collected here under the editorship of Harold Augenbraum, founder of the Proust Society of America, have ever been published in book form or translated into English until now. In this dual-language edition of new translations, Augenbraum has brought together nineteen renowned poets and poetry translators to bring Proust's exuberant verse back to life • Marcel Proust (1871-1922) is generally viewed as the greatest French novelist and perhaps the greatest European novelist of the 20th century

Dual-language edition • This collection of Dante Alighieri’s lyrics charts his poetic evolution and displays the ground on which his Vita nuova and Divine Comedy developed. Inspired in his early poems by troubadour love poetry, Dante would later come to master all the genres of the time, such as the canzone, the sonnet and the ballad • At the same time deeply personal – dealing with themes of love, death and exile – and imbued with the poetic and political milieux of the period, Dante’s Rime offer a fascinating glimpse into the imagination of arguably the greatest writer of all time • Translated by prize-winning translator J.G. Nichols and Anthony Mortimer who has published acclaimed verse translations of Petrarch and Michelangelo (Penguin), Dante’s Vita Nuova and the Poems of Cavalcanti (Alma Classics)

Dual-Language Edition • Cecco Angiolieri, the enfant terrible of Italian literature, loved women, gambling, food and wine. It is said that he found comfort for his bad luck at the dice and with Becchina, his unreciprocating lover, only by pouring venomous scorn upon his miserly parents • Cecco's outbursts of rage against his fate and his earthly view of the world - poles apart from the Stil Novo of Cavalcanti and Dante, the target of some of his fiercest sonnets - are perfectly encapsulated in his poetry, which is presented here with the facing Italian text in the witty verse translation of C.H. Scott and Anthony Mortimer

Dual-Language Edition • Dante's best friend and a major exponent of the Dolce Stil Novo, Guido Cavalcanti has had a lasting influence upon Italian poetry and is best known to English readers through the essays, translations and adaptations of Ezra Pound. Born from the cultural ferment of thirteenth-century Florence, Cavalcanti's poetry is an extraordinary blend of unorthodox philosophy, sharp psychological insight and dazzling formal mastery • Anthony Mortimer, acclaimed for his versions of Petrarch and Michelangelo, provides a new verse translation complete with notes, critical comment and biographical material: following in the footsteps of Rossetti and Pound, he presents a Cavalcanti who speaks for his own time and to ours

Dual-Language Edition • First published in 1831, and here presented in a dual-language edition with annotations and additional reading material, Leopardi's poetical masterpiece is an unsurpassed anatomy of man's unhappiness on earth • Trapped between an admiration for the classical past and a disappointment in the impoverished present, Leopardi rejected both the easy allure of Catholic faith and the unbridled optimism proposed by science and the Enlightenment. His unflinching pessimism and existential resolve, here brilliantly rendered in verse by prize-winning translator J.G. Nichols, make him one of the most fascinating and best-loved Italian poets

Dual-Language Edition • Foscolo ranks among the most famous and enduringly popular poets in Italian literature, and in this collection, the only available in the English language, his most significant poems are collected in J.G. Nichols's lucid verse translation • Expressing the author's political, civic and sentimental concerns, these poems will surprise the English reader with their immediacy and intimacy. Sepulchres, Foscolo's masterpiece, as well as being one of the pinnacles of European neoclassical literature, is still one of the most widely studied poems in Italy. Foscolo's poetry reveals the inner recesses of a passionate, restless and surprisingly modern mind • This edition includes notes on the text, extra material on Ugo Foscolo's Life and Works and a select bibliography

Dual-Language Edition • Translated for the first time into English • One of the pillars of nineteenth-century Russian prose fiction alongside towering figures such as Gogol, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, Ivan Turgenev started his writing career as a poet, gaining much critical acclaim and renown in that field. The title piece of this collection, Parasha, which brought the young author to the attention of the influential critic Vissarion Belinsky and established his reputation, is a humorous narrative poem in the vein of Pushkin's Eugene Onegin or Lermontov's Sashka, telling the story of a young woman's marriage to her dull, unromantic neighbour and the couple's humdrum and more or less happy life ever after • Also contained in this volume are four other narrative poems by Turgenev - Andrei, A Conversation, The Landowner and The Village Priest - all showing the author's early interest in ordinary stories of Russian life and all displaying the wit and stylistic versatility that we have come to associate with his more famous prose works

Dual-Language Edition • After years of fierce battle, the Emperor Charlemagne's army is finally on the brink of victory over the Saracens in Spain. Having proposed his stepfather Ganelon for the perilous task of serving as Charlemagne's envoy in the negotiations over the surrender of the Saracen king Marsile, Count Roland gets a taste of his own medicine when, with peace secured, Ganelon suggests that Roland should lead the rearguard of the army on the difficult return journey over the mountain passes to France. Yet Marsile's forces are massing, and Roland is unaware of just how deep Ganelon's treachery runs • Probably written around three centuries after the events it describes, The Song of Roland is the earliest and finest example of the French chansons de geste - verse epics that celebrated heroic deeds and were sung or recited by wandering minstrels

Dante is known to most readers outside Italy for his gritty descriptions of the Inferno, but there is another, gentler side to his poetry, which found expression throughout his career in verses that made him, together with his friend Guido Cavalcanti, the leading love poet of his generation • From the ballads and rime of his youth to the heart-rending lyrics written on the death of Beatrice and the more sober, philosophical canzoni of his later years, this volume provides the only English edition of the great Florentine’s complete love poems, in brilliant verse translations by Dante specialists J.G. Nichols and Anthony Mortimer

Alma Classics edition of The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer contains 3,000 notes and 30 pages extra material • "And specially from every shires ende • Of Engelond to Caunterbury they wende, • The hooly blisful martir for to seke, • That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke." • Assembling at the Tabard Inn in Southwark, a group of pilgrims begin their journey to Canterbury Cathedral. To entertain themselves on the long road, their host suggests that they regale each other with stories, with the teller of the best tale set to earn a free supper • The pilgrims correspond to all sections of medieval society, from the crusading knight to the drunken cook, and their tales span a range of genres, including the comic ribaldry and deception of 'The Miller's Tale' and the story of chivalry and courtly romance told by the Franklin

Life of Dante brings together the earliest accounts of Dante available, putting the celebratory essay of literary genius Giovanni Boccaccio together with the historical analysis of leading humanist Leonardo Bruni. Their writings, along with the other sources included in this volume, provide a wealth of insight and information into Dante’s unique character and life, from his susceptibility to the torments of passionate love, his involvement in politics, scholastic enthusiasms and military experience, to the stories behind the greatest heights of his poetic achievements. Not only are these accounts invaluable for their subject matter, they are also seminal examples of early biographical writing. Also included in this volume is a biography of Boccaccio, perhaps as great an influence on world literature as Dante himself

Unexpurgated Edition • Simplicius Simplicissimus – the towering achievement of H.J.C. von Grimmelshausen, one of the earliest novelists in the German language – charts the adventures of its hero, Simplicius, through the horrors of battle, murder, fire and famine, offering an invaluable eyewitness account of the Thirty Years War and showing how humanity can, in the end, triumph over brutality • A work of great poetic beauty and satirical strength, and a historical document of timeless value, Simplicius Simplicissimus is one of the greatest picaresque novels in the Western canon