Get Free Ebook Vita Nova, by Dante Alighieri
Vita Nova, By Dante Alighieri. One day, you will uncover a brand-new journey and knowledge by spending more cash. But when? Do you think that you have to acquire those all demands when having significantly money? Why don't you attempt to get something basic initially? That's something that will lead you to recognize even more concerning the globe, experience, some places, history, home entertainment, as well as much more? It is your very own time to continue reading practice. One of guides you can enjoy now is Vita Nova, By Dante Alighieri right here.
Vita Nova, by Dante Alighieri
Get Free Ebook Vita Nova, by Dante Alighieri
Vita Nova, By Dante Alighieri. Thanks for visiting the most effective web site that supply hundreds sort of book collections. Here, we will offer all publications Vita Nova, By Dante Alighieri that you need. Guides from popular authors and authors are offered. So, you could delight in now to obtain one at a time sort of book Vita Nova, By Dante Alighieri that you will certainly browse. Well, related to guide that you want, is this Vita Nova, By Dante Alighieri your selection?
Reading book Vita Nova, By Dante Alighieri, nowadays, will certainly not compel you to consistently acquire in the establishment off-line. There is a great place to get guide Vita Nova, By Dante Alighieri by online. This web site is the very best site with whole lots varieties of book collections. As this Vita Nova, By Dante Alighieri will certainly be in this publication, all books that you require will certainly be right here, as well. Merely look for the name or title of the book Vita Nova, By Dante Alighieri You can locate what exactly you are looking for.
So, also you require commitment from the firm, you may not be puzzled more since books Vita Nova, By Dante Alighieri will always aid you. If this Vita Nova, By Dante Alighieri is your ideal partner today to cover your task or job, you could as quickly as feasible get this publication. Just how? As we have informed formerly, just check out the link that our company offer here. The verdict is not just guide Vita Nova, By Dante Alighieri that you search for; it is how you will certainly obtain many publications to support your ability as well as ability to have great performance.
We will certainly show you the best and also most convenient means to get book Vita Nova, By Dante Alighieri in this world. Great deals of compilations that will certainly support your responsibility will be right here. It will make you really feel so best to be part of this site. Becoming the member to consistently see what up-to-date from this publication Vita Nova, By Dante Alighieri site will make you really feel ideal to search for guides. So, recently, as well as here, get this Vita Nova, By Dante Alighieri to download and save it for your priceless deserving.
Dante's Vita nova (ca. 1292-95) is one of the most famous love stories in literature. Many know the story of Dante's love for Beatrice, starting in childhood, her death at a young age, and his devotion to her in death eventually leading to her reappearance as Dante's guide to paradise in the Divine Comedy. Less known is the fact that many of the poems in the Vita nova that Dante claims or implies he wrote for Beatrice probably were not written for her, and that the poems alone (there are thirty-one of them total in the libello, or "little book," as Dante calls it) don't tell this story at all: the prose, written years after many of the poems, has this function. The prose creates the illusion of narrative continuity between the poems; it is Dante's way of reconstructing himself and his art in terms of his evolving sense of the limitations of courtly love (the system of ritualized love and art that Dante and his poet-friends inherited from the Provençal poets, the Sicilian poets of the court of Frederick II, and the Tuscan poets before them). Sometime in his twenties, Dante decided to try to write love poetry that was less centered on the self and more aimed at love as such: he intended to elevate courtly love poetry, many of its tropes and its language, into sacred love poetry. Beatrice for Dante was the embodiment of this kind of love--transparent to the Absolute, inspiring the integration of desire aroused by beauty with the longing of the soul for divine splendor.
Andrew Frisardi's translation captures both the tone and the meaning of Dante's language, creating poems and prose in contemporary English that convey much of the aesthetic experience of the originals. The book includes extensive explanatory notes and a long introduction that provide background and context for better understanding Dante's references and use of symbols that were well known in his time but not as well known in ours.
The book's full contents are:
Translator's Preface and Note on the Text
Introduction
Vita Nova
Appendix A: Italian Texts of Poems with Prose Translations
Appendix B: Gorni's and Barbi's Chapter Divisions of the Vita Nova
List of Abbreviations
Notes
Bibliography
Acknowledgments
Index of First Lines
Index of Subjects and Names
- Sales Rank: #482432 in Books
- Published on: 2012-04-15
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.25" h x 1.20" w x 6.13" l, 1.25 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 408 pages
Review
"Frisardi's superb translation of the Vita nova succeeds wonderfully in arraying a renowned medieval love story in modern attire. . . . A splendid achievement." --Richard H. Lansing, Brandeis University, editor of Dante Studies and The Dante Encyclopedia
"Andrew Frisardi's splendid new edition of Vita nova combines his compelling translation of Dante's original work with a rich and fascinating scholarly commentary, . . . a contemporary version that captures both its beauty and complexity. --Dana Gioia, former chair of the National Endowment for the Arts and author of Can Poetry Matter?
"I recommend . . . this elegant new verse translation of Dante's Vita nova from Andrew Frisardi . . . not only for the verve and accuracy of the translation but also for the excellent and thorough introduction and notes."--Teodolinda Barolini, Columbia University, author of Dante and the Origins of Italian Literary Culture
"If you who love poetry are looking for a guide into how the greatest of our poets began, this book is for you." --Paul Mariani, Boston College, author of Gerard Manley Hopkins: A Life and Deaths and Transfigurations: Poems
"Andrew Frisardi's Vita nova is a monument of gracious, respectful translation and loving scholarship. . . . The richly informative introduction and notes grant entry to this rarefied world of metaphysical eros." --Rosanna Warren, Boston University, author of Ghost in a Red Hat: Poems and Fables of the Self: Studies in Lyric Poetry
About the Author
Dante Alighieri is widely considered to be one of the world's greatest poets. He was born in 1265 in Florence. He was well known in his youth as one of the leading lyric poets of Tuscany, a central figure of an avant-garde literary movement in Florence. In 1295 he entered Florentine politics and in the summer of 1300 he became one of the six governing Priors of Florence, the highest political office in city government. In 1302, the political situation forced Dante and his party into exile. He continued to write, producing two unfinished works--the first treatise of literary criticism and the first treatise of philosophy in a European vernacular language--before starting his work on The Divine Comedy. At some point late in life he took asylum in Ravenna where he completed The Divine Comedy and died, much honoured, in 1321.
Andrew Frisardi is the author of Death of a Dissembler (poems, 2014), The Young Dante and the One Love (essays, 2013), and The Quest for Knowledge in Dante's Convivio (essays, 2015); the translator of various volumes from Italian, including an annotated edition of Dante's Vita Nova (2012); and the editor of Daily Bread: Art and Work in the Reign of Quantity (2015), a collection of essays by Brian Keeble. His awards include a fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation, a Hawthornden Literary Fellowship, and the Raiziss/de Palchi Translation Award from the Academy of American Poets. Originally from Boston, he lives in central Italy.
Most helpful customer reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful.
Masterful Translation of a Masterpiece: The Invention of the Modern Reader
By Donnel D. Jones Jr.
Andrew Frisardi's stellar translation and thorough analysis and annotation of one's of Western civilization's most important books, Dante Alighieri's "La Vita Nova," are an indispensable guide to novice and expert alike. It is an exhaustively researched, annotated, and comprehensive translation that will make you fall in love with Dante all over again--or for the first time. You will want to purchase this outstanding book.
Frisardi's La Vita Nova is such a prodigious effort that it is impossible to encapsulate all that it does for the reader. First, Frisardi gives an extensive and scholarly introduction to the work, its importance in Dante's oeuvre, its place in Italian letters before and after, its relationship to the Medieval past and the vanguard position it holds in what will become modern literature, its role in the preparation and gestation of Dante's future magnum opus, the Commedia or The Divine Comedy, and the many themes that inform the work's combination of prose and poetry (or prosimetrum) that comprises La Vita Nova. The introduction is followed by the translation itself, the Italian original, the exhaustive annotations, and a bibliography.
Frisardi's introduction alone is worth reading and re-reading to get a good grip on one of the Western canon's foundational works. In his introduction, Frisardi explores Dante's biography, history, the philosophy and theology of Dante's time, the great poet's predecessors and his departure from them, the purpose of memory, the literary style of his day (the "stilnovisti" or "new style"), Dante's three selves that inform the work (one who records from the "book of memory," one who is the young man in the past whom Dante looks upon from the "present" of his recording, and one who examines and interprets the events of his past), the scholasticism that informs La Vita Nova, the nature of "love-amor" in the work, the treatment of women in the work (something vis-a-vis the "stilnovisti" that is unexpectedly subversive of the Church's traditional view of women), a discussion of death and elegy (Beatrice dies in the course of the past events being told), the masterful symmetry of the work, the allegory that surrounds Beatrice, and the number nine and its frequent manifestations in La Vita Nova.
Frisardi is an expert on his subject and has labored with great love and attention to render Dante's masterpiece into a workable and contemporary English. La Vita Nova is a series of poems and prose commentary (as mentioned, a prosimetrum) concerning Dante's love for Beatrice, a crucial figure who appears later in his Commedia. On one level La Vita Nova is the "typical" story of young love and passion, yet on so many other levels it incorporates all manner of commentary, speculation, adornment, analysis, and tireless yet succinct rendering of his love's cosmic significance in a picture far greater and far reaching than the young adolescent, whom Dante's portrays as his young self, could ever imagine during his feverish distractions. No writer before or since has made better use of "teenage love" than this master of words.
Through his translation Frisardi discusses and demonstrates what we would now consider to be Dante's psychological approach to his subject. This approach is something of a deja-vu for a modern reader. The reason for this feeling of having "been here before" is that Dante invented this very way of thinking and writing. Dante is our familiar, our companion all along, and Frisardi reassures us that so much that we take for granted in our love of literature owes an enormous debt to this singular Italian. If Harold Bloom claims that Shakespeare "invented the human," Frisardi shows that Dante invented "the modern reader" or our very selves as readers. It bears reminding that without Dante there would be no Shakespeare, something almost a tautology that is assumed without merit of reflection. Dante, in short, anticipated us and the future of writing and reading in the West. Frisardi's translation and scholarship helped me realize this truth and a re-reading of his book will no doubt show me much, much more.
La Vita Nova deals with various aspects of love that Frisardi takes pains to elucidate in the introduction, which must be read. Though Dante is easy to read on the surface, there are many layers that can be peeled away to view other meanings. Above all, however, in contradiction to today's Postmodern impulse, Frisardi claims tellingly in his introduction:
"As far as Dante is concerned, there is nothing more pointless than composing poetry whose intended meaning cannot be explained by the author."
In the prosimetrum that mixes prose and poetry, Dante does just that, if rather oddly at times for the modern reader. In the chapters of La Vita Nova, Dante explains his situation, what he is feeling and what is happening to him as he suffers and explores his love for a beautiful woman, his beloved Beatrice. He then includes a poem in each chapter to sing of that love and its manifold meanings in sterling verse, beautifully translated by Frisardi, only to explain to the reader what the poem means in a commentary after the poem. This rather odd commentary on his own poem is, as Frisardi explains, a "divisioni" and is part of the Scholastic tradition.
As an example of the beauty of Dante's poetry and Frisardi's adroit translation, I quote in full a sonnet from chapter 17, which as Frisardi points out in the annotation is one of the most well known in all Italian literature and a standard for Italian children to memorize. Thanks to Frisardi's translation, one can see why:
So open and so self-possessed appears
my lady when she's greeting everyone,
that every tongue, in trembling, falters dumb,
and eyes don't dare to watch her as she nears.
She senses all the praising of her worth,
and passes by benevolently dressed
in humbleness, appearing manifest
from heaven to show a miracle on earth.
She shows herself so pleasing to the one
who sees her, sweetness passes through the eye
to the heart--as he who's missed it never knows.
So from her face it then appears there blows
a loving spirit, as if spring's begun,
which breathes upon the soul and tells it: Sigh.
In keeping with the formalism of Dante's verse Frisardi commits to English iambic pentameter and a rhyme scheme that usually follows the original's, a daunting task that pays off for the reader but must have been a sweat-lodge of a task to accomplish. His efforts generously redound to the reader's reward.
Not only grace but erudition accompany Frisardi's translation. The annotation on chapter 17, which contains the poem above, extends for eight pages. His notes, while intimidating to non-experts, should be explored by the novice or anyone who loves literature for the thorough treatment Frisardi gives to deepen our understanding of Dante's irreplaceable genius.
For example, in reference to the poem from this chapter, he quotes a scholar named Robert Pogue Harrison with reference to the word "sigh" ("sospira") that ends the poem:
"The entire lyric project of the Vita Nuova lies in the sigh that ends the poem and brings its subject to rest in aesthetic stasis. Here Beatrice no longer incites desire but placates it.... The motion and rhythm of the verses seem to reproduce a deep intake and respiration of animating breath....While the poem consummates itself in the sigh, the final expiration also marks the beginning of a lyric retrieval of the plentitude of presence. It consummates the lyric enunciation at the very moment that it initiates the recovery of aesthetic grace, for the poem issues forth from the sigh in which it culminates."
To expand upon Frisardi's annotation, another way of looking at "sospira/sigh" is the suggestion of release at the moment of coitus as expressed by a vocal outburst (enunciation) of the intense oneness achieved at the climax of sexual union, even as it coincides with the deepest yearning that accompanies it. "Issue" is what consummates the sigh at the same time it expresses desire. Frisardi's notes help the reader along with forming one's own conclusions and insights.
Fridsardi then continues to summarize the insight of others, such as that of Bernard S. Levy, whom he states,
"writes that by making Beatrice analogous to Christ and through the specific allusion to the account in the Gospel of John of Christ's breathing the Holy Spirit into the souls of men, Dante `transforms the lover's conventional sigh from the involuntary exhalation of the young lover into a spiritual entity which can...achieve a fore-taste of the heavenly vision.'"
Frisardi goes on further to mine the insights of other scholars on this one word "sigh." Quoting Robert Klein,
"Identifying the spirit escaping from the wounded heart with the lover's sign might seem [a] gratuitious invention...if it did not have such a well-established tradition. With the `last sigh' one `surrenders the spirit';...Alfred of Sareschel...believes that the soul, in ecstasy of contemplation, often forgets to breathe and must occasionally make up for it by a deeper breath, which is a sigh; Albertus Magnus proposes that the heart constricts, filled with blood and `spiriti'; and Thomas Aquinas gives a similar, very mechanistic opinion, according to which the `great heart' of the young is literally enlarged by the influx of spirits dilated by youthful warmth; cries of pain and gestures of frightened withdrawal are similarly explained by the actual movements of the spirits."
These extensive quotes from the annotation on just one word, "sigh," demonstrate the heavy lifting Frisardi has done to master, and add to, all the scholarship that has been accomplished before him and that informed his masterful translation. All the commentary quoted above, and more not quoted, and its resulting illumination for the reader's deeper understanding and appreciation are to be found in a small space at the bottom of page 234 and top of 235: a single and priceless spot in a dense forest of scholarship.
If one takes the time to read these notes, at least the ones that bear the most interest for the reader, the effort will pay generous dividends of understanding Dante's masterwork. Frisardi's commentary is never turgid and in reverential homage to his Master presents a clear face of understanding--"there is nothing more pointless than composing poetry whose intended meaning cannot be explained by the author." The same holds for one's prose, both Dante's and Frisardi's.
Frisardi's translation and explication of La Vita Nova is a prodigious act of love, scholarship, hard-won translation, and prayer. Yes, prayer, because when taking on such a project as he has requires a helpful hand from above! With this highly accomplished effort, Frisardi's prayer has been answered many times over. We are his grateful beneficiaries.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
This book is indescribably good. Even for those who are not inclined towards ...
By Siham Karami
This book is indescribably good. Even for those who are not inclined towards academic, scholarly work, people who simply love good poetry, this will draw you into a world you didn't imagine existed. You can dip your feet, or I should say heart, in the water, or read the fantastic introduction which itself makes fascinating reading as well as gives the reader insights into the world and language of Dante, a medieval poet who wrote "modern" literature. It is all about love and the struggles it creates, and how a young man turned these into a spiritual journey. And it is written with both poetry and prose, a unique style the author's notes and introduction enhances. There are copious notes for those who want to go deeper. The poetry translations are gorgeous, a fine rendering of a great poet's work. But even more, for me it was the insights into how the Vita Nova was written as a whole and the meaning imbued even in its structure, that made this one of my favorite books.
See all 2 customer reviews...
Vita Nova, by Dante Alighieri PDF
Vita Nova, by Dante Alighieri EPub
Vita Nova, by Dante Alighieri Doc
Vita Nova, by Dante Alighieri iBooks
Vita Nova, by Dante Alighieri rtf
Vita Nova, by Dante Alighieri Mobipocket
Vita Nova, by Dante Alighieri Kindle
^ Get Free Ebook Vita Nova, by Dante Alighieri Doc
^ Get Free Ebook Vita Nova, by Dante Alighieri Doc
^ Get Free Ebook Vita Nova, by Dante Alighieri Doc
^ Get Free Ebook Vita Nova, by Dante Alighieri Doc
