Books by Piero Boitani

(Re)discover the timeless beauty of ancient literature

The World Machine is the second volume Piero Boitani devotes to the way in which the sciences and the arts interact when it comes to modern consideration of the stars and the cosmos (the first, also published in English by Nova Science Publishers, is entitled Looking Upwards: Stars in Ancient and Medieval Cultures). This is not a history of astronomy or astrophysics, but the story arranged in chronological order of how humans have reacted to fundamental changes in astronomy by means of poetry, narrative, painting, architecture, and music over the last five hundred years. This time, the story is basically European (and American), as all the relevant scientific discoveries were made in Europe, and it is the European imaginaire that dominates world culture (non-European images of the universe are dealt with in Looking Upwards). The historical development of this image and of the ideas that contribute to its formation is rather complex and diversified, but two major turning points are clearly identifiable one lies between the sixteenth and seventeenth century, and one at the very beginning of the twentieth century. Concerning the former, the observation of the sky was revolutionized by the telescope. Galileo, Kepler and Newton could thus base their new models of the universe on much more precise experiences, and mathematics became the new language of astronomy. The cosmos increasingly tended to be viewed as a machine, a mechanism like a clock (hence the books title). Between the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century the second scientific revolution took place. The instruments became so refined that they began to detect increasingly remote objects, and the phenomena found in the sky, as well as their behavior, no longer fully responded to Newtonian laws. New theories relativity and quantum mechanics were elaborated, the mathematics needed for them becoming much more difficult for the layman, and the whole structure of matter, with the discovery of the atom, its constituent parts, and its particles was gradually uncovered. Things reached a critical moment with Heisenbergs and Hubbles formulation of, respectively, the uncertainty principle and of the increasing speed at which galaxies recede from us the further they are and finally with the conflict between relativity and quantum theories. Some recent poets (notably in South America) and many painters and musicians in Europe and North America have tried to describe this new cosmos, but the same happened after the first scientific revolution. In short, The Machine of the World recounts an exciting adventure whose protagonists are the likes of Tasso and Milton, Goethe and Wallace Stevens, Canaletto and Friedrich, Verdi and Puccini, Van Gogh and Schoenberg, Joyce and Thomas Mann.

Explores the concept, and the 'imaginary world' surrounding Chaucer's "The House of Fame". This book contains an outline and discussion of the poem. It explores the 'history' and meaning of the idea of 'Fame', such as Chaucer might have received from tradition. It demonstrates that "The House of Fame" is in a sense, Chaucer's creative manifesto.

The theme of the `body and soul' relationship in medieval texts and modern reworkings.

Members of the Florentine family of the Donati feature prominently in Dante's Divine Comedy . Their presence is explored by Piero Boitani, as a 'comedy' within the Comedy, in close readings of the three major episodes in which they appear, one for each of Inferno , Purgatorio , and Paradiso .

In this slim, poetically powerful volume, Piero Boitani develops his earlier work in The Bible and Its Rewritings, focusing on Shakespeare's "e;rescripturing"e; of the Gospels. Boitani persuasively urges that Shakespeare read the New Testament with great care and an overall sense of affirmation and participation, and that many of his plays constitute their own original testament, insofar as they translate the good news into human terms. In Hamlet and King Lear, he suggests, Shakespeare's "e;New Testament"e; is merely hinted at, and faith, salvation, and peace are only glimpsed from far away. But in Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale, and The Tempest, the themes of compassion and forgiveness, transcendence, immanence, the role of the deity, resurrection, and epiphany are openly, if often obliquely, staged. The Christian Gospels and the Christian Bible are the signposts of this itinerary. Originally published in 2009, Boitani's Il Vangelo Secondo Shakespeare was awarded the 2010 De Sanctis Prize, a prestigious Italian literary award. Now available for the first time in an English translation, The Gospel according to Shakespeare brings to a broad scholarly and nonscholarly audience Boitani's insights into the current themes dominating the study of Shakespeare's literary theology. It will be of special interest to general readers interested in Shakespeare's originality and religious perspective.

This volume derives its title from John Dryden's phrase for the British tendency to take up literary masterpieces from the past and ""perfect"" them. It adopts Dryden's notion as a framework for exploring ways in which classical and medieval texts have been rewritten by modern authors.

Professor Boitani's latest book explores the areas of the tragic and the sublime in medieval literature. Boitani studies tragic and sublime tensions in stories and scenes recounted by such major poets as Dante, Chaucer and Petrarch, as well as themes shared by writers and philosophers and traditional poetic images.

In this detailed study of English narrative verse the author describes and analyses the undisputed masterpieces of narrative (such as the works of the Gawain poet, Langland, Gower and Chaucer), as well as anonymous romances and specimens of religious and comic narrative which form the background to more well-known poems.