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The Theme of the Plague in Italian Letters

by Vincenzo Traversa (Author)
©2018 Monographs XXXVI, 388 Pages

Summary

Several poetic and prose compositions in early Italian literature contain references to the bubonic plague and other illnesses that were used in the language both literally and metaphorically. The first detailed description of a plague epidemic, however, was written by Giovanni Boccaccio in the introduction to The Decameron. It is a precise and dramatic view of the physical, social, and medical conditions of Florence during the epidemic of 1348. The Theme of the Plague in Italian Letters follows the subsequent developments, both in poetic and prose works, until the time of the plague of Milan of 1630. With the report of Giuseppe Ripamonti and other writers, the plague became not only a medical issue but also a topic involving the laws of the time as they appear in the trials of the presumed untori (spreaders of the disease). A combination of faith, fear, and superstition led the legal officials and the populace to imagine that the plague was a divine punishment and was deliberately spread by individuals of criminal nature. Arrests and trials involving interrogations and the use of merciless physical tortures (a legitimate procedure in Europe at that time) brought about a formidable reaction led by early humanitarians, such as Cesare Beccaria and Pietro Verri, who determined the eventual changes in the laws and legal procedures. The Plague of Milan of 1630 by Giuseppe Ripamonti, the treatise by L. A. Muratori Del Governo della Peste, 1720, and several interventions contributed to a series of radical changes that appeared in the works of Alessandro Manzoni, such as The Betrothed and The History of the Pillar of Infamy that are discussed in part or in full in this study.

Table Of Contents

  • Cover
  • Title
  • Copyright
  • About the author(s)/editor(s)
  • About the book
  • This eBook can be cited
  • Table of Contents
  • Acknowledgements
  • Prefatory Note: Yersinia pestis
  • Notes
  • Bibliography
  • The Plague of Athens
  • Note
  • Bibliography
  • The Plague of Justinian
  • Bibliography
  • Daniel Defoe: A Journal of the Plague Year; or Memorials of the Great Pestilence in London in 1665
  • Note
  • Bibliography
  • Introduction
  • Chapter One: The Italian Language
  • Chapter Two: The Texts
  • Guido Faba: Parlamenti ed Epistole—De Quadragesima ad Carnisprivium
  • Proverbia que dicuntur super natura feminarum
  • Panfilo in Antico Veneziano
  • Guidotto da Bologna
  • Poems Found in the Memoirs of Bologna’s Notaries
  • Will of Beatrice da Capraia (1278)
  • Ristoro d’Arezzo: La composizione del mondo
  • The Sydrac of Otranto
  • Loyse de Rosa: Praises of Naples
  • Landolfo Seniore: Historia Mediolanensis
  • Romualdo di Salerno: Chronicon
  • Donizone: The Life of Mathilda
  • Gesta Friderici
  • Mosè del Brolo From Bergamo
  • Arrigo da Settimello: Against Fortune’s Adversity
  • Boncompagno da Signa: On the Imperial Statutes
  • Accursio: Glossa ad Institutiones
  • San Francesco d’Assisi: Laudes creaturarum
  • Meo Abbracciavacca: A Dispute With Guittone d’Arezzo
  • Mare amoroso
  • Proverbia quae dicuntur super natura feminarum
  • Girardo Patecchio: Splanamento de li proverbi de Salomone
  • Uguccione da Lodi
  • Della caducità della vita umana: On the Transience of Human Life
  • Bonvesin da la Riva: Disputatio rosae cum viola
  • Ruggieri Apugliese
  • Laude di Cortona
  • Jacopone da Todi
  • Brunetto Latini: Tesoretto
  • Andrea da Grosseto
  • Bono Giamboni: Della Miseria dell’uomo
  • Egidio Colonna: De Regimine Principum
  • A Translation From Brunetto Latini’s Tresor
  • Marco Polo: Milione
  • Fiori e vita di Filosofi ed altri Savi ed Imperadori
  • Translation From the Tristan Tradition, Thirteenth Century
  • La Tavola Ritonda, Thirteenth Century
  • Bono Giamboni: Il Libro de’ vizi e delle virtudi
  • Cronica Fiorentina MLV
  • Braccio Bracci
  • Cino Rinuccini
  • Antonio Pucci
  • Francesco da Barberino
  • St. John Chrysostom
  • I Fioretti di San Francesco
  • How Saint Francis Healed a Leper’s Soul and Body
  • Angelo Clareno: Cronaca delle sette tribolazioni
  • Elizabeth von Schönau: Revelations on the Life of Our Lady
  • An Apocryphal Gospel: Secundum Thomam Israelitam
  • Leggenda di Sant’Alessio
  • Dante Alighieri
  • Francesco Petrarca
  • Secretum. Liber secundus
  • Senili
  • Senili
  • Senili
  • Ad seipsum
  • Ad Italiam
  • Giovanni Boccaccio
  • The Decameron
  • Introduction and Description of the Plague of 1348
  • Leggenda di San Giuliano l’Ospitaliere
  • Guglielmo dell’Epopea: Guillaume D’Orange
  • Feo Belcari: The Life of the Blessed Giovanni Colombini From Siena
  • The Miracle of the Leper
  • Giovanni di Pagolo Morelli: Ricordi
  • Pandolfo Collenuccio: Istorie del Regno di Napoli, a lo Illustrissimo Principe Ercule, Duca di Ferrara
  • Niccolò Machiavelli: De Principatibus XXIII
  • Discorsi sopra la Prima Deca di Tito Livio
  • Historie Fiorentine: Libro secondo, XLII
  • Francesco Guicciardini: Consolatoria
  • Storia d’Italia
  • Lodovico Ariosto: La Lena
  • Letter to the Duke of Ferrara
  • Battista Guarini: Il Pastor Fido
  • Michelangelo Buonarroti Il Giovane: La Tancia
  • Sforza Pallavicino: Del Bene
  • Quanto sien false le lodi attribuite da’ poeti alla vita contadinesca
  • Secondo Lancellotti: L’Oggidì
  • Daniello Bartoli
  • Il Giappone
  • Paolo Segneri: Quaresimale
  • Francesco Berni: Encomio della peste
  • Chapter One
  • Chapter Two
  • Ludovico Antonio Muratori
  • Del Governo della Peste e delle Maniere di Guardarsene
  • First Book. Chapter 1
  • Second Book. Chapter XI
  • Second Book. Chapter XII
  • Third Book. The Ecclesiastical Rule. Chapter I
  • Chapter II
  • Chapter IV
  • Chapter V
  • Chapter VI
  • Chapter IX
  • Giuseppe Parini
  • Antonio Genovesi: Discorso sopra il vero fine delle lettere e delle scienze
  • A Romualdo Sterlich, Marchese di Cervignano, a Chieti
  • Francesco Longano
  • Domenico Grimaldi: Visitatore per le università
  • Francescantonio Grimaldi: La vita di Diogene Cinico
  • Giuseppe Maria Galanti: Nuova Descrizione Storica e Geografica d’Italia. Carattere, arti, letteratura, religione, lingua, usi e costumi degl’Italiani
  • Paolo Frisi: Elogio di Maria Teresa Imperatrice
  • Gianbattista Biffi: Viaggio a Venezia, 1773
  • Francesco Dalmazzo Vasco: Note all’ Esprit des Lois. Il Dispotismo
  • Mezzi d’incoraggiamento al matrimonio
  • Giuseppe Borghi: Allo Spirito Santo
  • Antonio Guadagnoli: Colera morbus
  • Giuseppe Giusti: L’incoronazione
  • Ippolito Nievo: Le Confessioni di un italiano. Chapter XXI
  • Ugo Foscolo: Discorso storico sul testo del Decameron (1825)
  • Notes
  • Bibliography
  • Chapter Three: The Dawning of a New Age
  • Chapter Four: Milan 1630
  • Note
  • Chapter Five: Giuseppe Ripamonti (1573–1643)
  • Lombardy and Milan
  • The Spanish Governors
  • Origins of the Famine
  • Famine in Lombardy
  • The Decurions
  • The Lazzaretto (I)
  • The Lazzaretto (II)
  • The Lazzaretto (III)
  • The Riots of St. Martin’s Day, 1628
  • The Onset of the Plague in Milan
  • Notes
  • Bibliography
  • Chapter Six: Ludovico Settala and Alessandro Tadino
  • Chapter Seven: Father Felice Casati
  • A Comparison of Milan’s Pestilence With the Very Old Contagion of the Athenians
  • A Comparison of Milan’s Plague With That of Florence
  • A Comparison of the Pestilence of 1576 and 1620
  • The Issue Concerning the ‘Untori’
  • On Piazza, Mora, Baruello, and Other ‘Untori’
  • Notes
  • Chapter Eight: Pietro Verri, Cesare Beccaria, and “Il Caffè”
  • Pietro Verri
  • Osservazioni sulla Tortura (Remarks on Torture), An Introduction
  • From Osservazioni sulla Tortura (Cont.)
  • Chapter 2. Description of the Plague That Devastated Milan in 1630
  • Chapter 3. Origin of the Trial of Health Commissioner Guglielmo Piazza
  • Chapter 4. How Commissioner Piazza Confessed to Being Guilty of the Pestilential Smearing and Accused Giacomo Mora
  • Chapter 7. How the Trial of the Pestilential Smearing Ended
  • Chapter 8. If Torture Is an Atrocious Torment
  • Chapter 9. If Torture Is a Means to Know the Truth
  • Chapter 10. If the Laws and Criminal Procedures Consider Torture as a Means to Obtain the Truth
  • Chapter 11. If Torture Is a Licit Way to Discover the Truth
  • Chapter 12. The Use of Torture in Ancient Countries
  • Bibliography
  • Chapter Nine: Cesare Beccaria
  • To the Reader
  • Origin of Punishments
  • The Right to Punish
  • Errors in the Measure of Punishments
  • On the Purpose of Punishments
  • On Secret Charges
  • On Torture
  • On Punishments of Noble People
  • On the Mildness of Punishments
  • On Capital Punishment
  • On the Way to Prevent Crimes
  • Conclusion
  • Note
  • Bibliography
  • Chapter Ten: Alessandro Manzoni: I promessi sposi
  • I promessi sposi
  • I promessi sposi: Chapters XXXI and XXXII
  • Chapter XXXI
  • Chapter XXXII
  • Chapter XXXIV
  • Note
  • Bibliography
  • Chapter Eleven: Alessandro Manzoni: Storia della Colonna Infame
  • Introduction
  • Chapter I
  • Chapter II
  • Chapter III
  • Chapter IV
  • Chapter V
  • Chapter VI
  • Chapter VII
  • Chapter Twelve: Il Timor di Dio (The Fear of God)
  • Bibliography
  • Selected Bibliography
  • Index
  • Series index

| ix →

Acknowledgments

I should like to express my gratitude to my wife, Gina, whose dedication to the present project made its completion possible. As always, the kind staff at Peter Lang Publishing deserve my sincere thanks for their assistance and diligence through the preparation and production of the present book.

| xi →

Prefatory Note

Yersinia pestis

In the issue of October 22, 2015 of the research journal Cell Press, a group of researchers, Simon Rasmussen, Morten Erik Allentoft, Kasper Nielsen, … Rasmus Nielsen, Kristian Kristiansen, and Eske Willerslev, announced an important result, namely that early divergent strains of Yersinia pestis [existed] in Eurasia 5,000 years ago. They indicated, in brief, that the plague causing bacteria Yersinia pestis1 infected humans in Bronze Age Eurasia, three millennia earlier than any historical records of plague, but only acquired the genetic changes making it a highly virulent, flee-borne bubonic strain 3,000 years ago. The highlights of the document read as follows:

Yersinia pestis was common across Eurasia in the Bronze Age; the most recent common ancestor of all Yersinia pestis was 5,783 years ago; the ymt gene was acquired before 951 cal BC, giving rise to transmission via fleas and Bronze Age Yersinia pestis was not capable of causing bubonic plague.

It may be helpful, at this time, to cast a glance at some facts that could shed light on the topic that the present study will develop, that is, the times, the ways and the characteristics assumed by the description of the plague and other related topics in some works of Italian literature through a considerably long period of time ending with the major work of Alessandro Manzoni, I promessi sposi (The Betrothed). ← xi | xii →

The plague causing bacteria, Yersinia pestis, as one can imagine, has a long history. In 1894, however, the Swiss doctor Alexandre John-Emile Yersin, during the Hong Kong epidemic, isolated the bacillus that had caused so many deaths through the ages in various parts of the world, and called it Pasteurella pestis to honor Louis Pasteur, the person who had initiated the study of infections in the modern sense. In the same year also the Japanese doctor Shibasaburo Kitasato, who had isolated the tetanus bacillus in 1889, obtained the same result as the Swiss doctor, but history remembers Yersin, also because the plague bacillus, rather than being called Pasteurella, was soon called Yersinia pestis as it is known today.

Numerous sources of information concerning this subject are publicly available now and they indicate, among several other details, that there are two main forms of plague whose difference may be determined by analyzing the infected parts.

In the case of the bubonic2 plague, human infection may occur through the bite of rats’ fleas, or the bites of the rats as well as other rodents. The type of fleas that may affect humans, as well as lice, less commonly, however, are conducive to transmission of the infection among humans.

The disease emerges violently, after a period of incubation of two to twelve days. It causes high fever, severe headache, general weakness, nausea, sensitivity to light, sleep difficulties, vomit and delirium. Pustules, appear in the areas of the skin bitten by the insect, and the lymph nodes, especially in the area of the groins and armpits, become inflamed and swollen. (These are the bubboni, singular bubbone mentioned in some works of the Italian literature that are considered in this study.)

In the most serious cases, the infection attacks the entire system, causing necrosis (localized death of living tissue) of the fingers and toes, as well as kidney complications and internal hemorrhages. These symptoms may precede death, otherwise, in the less serious cases, the fever disappears after about two weeks and the bubboni release pus and eventually disappear leaving a scar.

The pulmonary3 plague, a much more serious kind of disease, attacks the lungs and may even be a complication from the bubonic type. It shows a considerable lowering of the body temperature, breathing difficulties, cough, a bluish coloring (circulatory and breathing difficulties) and extreme weakness. It may lead to death because of acute pulmonary edema. Particularly notable in this type of disease is the occurrence of serious neurological disorders.

The pulmonary plague is transmissible even without the action of the fleas, namely by air by way of the coughing and sneezing of infectious individuals that may easily infect other persons.

As we shall see further on, the people who lived in the past centuries had to struggle against this disease without really knowing what it was, what caused it, and which remedies could be used in order to control the seemingly unstoppable progress of the epidemic that caused such an enormous number of victims. ← xii | xiii →

As if an almost complete ignorance of the nature of the disease were not a sufficient drawback, other aspects and consequences of it occupied the minds of political and religious leaders and educated persons as well. Ignorance, superstition and fear played a large role in the suffering of the affected populations and contributed to the worsening of an already critical time. On the other hand, the epidemic brought out in some the best and noblest qualities known to mankind, as the documents that will be considered in this study will prove.

Notes

1. The Italian term indicating pestis is la peste. It is a feminine, singular noun. Consequently all grammatical references are feminine and singular, namely articles (definite and indefinite, la peste, una peste) and adjectives, la peste bubbonica.

2. bubbone (il bubbone, un bubbone. m.s.) An inflammatory swelling of a lymph gland especially in the groins (bubo).

3. polmone (il polmone, un polmone, m.s.) lung.

Bibliography

Cipolla, C. M. Fighting the Plague in Seventeenth-Century Italy. Madison, 1981.

Ewald, P. W. Evolution of Infectious Diseases. Oxford, 1996.

——. Plague Time: The New Germ Theory of Disease. New York, 2002.

Gottfried, R. The Black Death: Natural and Human Disaster in Medieval Europe. New York, 1983.

Kohn, G. C. Encyclopedia of Plague and Pestilence from Ancient Times to the Present. New York, 2002.

Langland, W. Piers the Ploughman. New York, 1986.

Markel, H. When Germs Travel. New York, 2005.

Moore, P. Pandemics: 50 of the World’s Worst Plagues and Infectious Diseases, New Holland, 2009.

Orent, W. Plague: The Mysterious Past and Terrifying Future of the World’s Most Dangerous Disease. New York, London, 2004.

Rasmussen, S., Allentoft, M. E., Nielsen, K., …, Nielsen, R., Kristiansen, K., and Willerslev, E. Early Divergent Strains of Yersinia pestis in Eurasia 5,000 Years Ago. Cell, 2015.

Shah, S. Pandemic: Tracking Contagions, from Cholera to Ebola and Beyond. New York, 2016.

Slack, P. The Impact of Plague in Tudor and Stuart England. Oxford, 1985.

Ziegler, P. The Black Death. London, 1997.

| xv →

The Plague of Athens

History indicates that the earliest description of the epidemic generally known as the Plague of Athens was written by Thucydides in his Peloponnesian Wars. He was born probably about 460 B.C. and died about the year 400 b.c. Perhaps he participated in some events of the war. He contracted the plague but recovered. The plague epidemic is referred to as the Plague of Athens because it developed primarily in that city, but not only there, in the years 429–426 b.c. In Book II the historian wrote,

They had not been many days in Attica before the plague first broke out among the Athenians. At the beginning the doctors were quite incapable of treating the disease because of their ignorance … In the following summer the Peloponnesians and their allies … invaded Attica, again under the command of the Spartan king Anchidamus. … Taking up their positions, they set about the devastation of the country.

The author gives the later statement a primary importance because he was able to see what consequences followed the state of surprise even of those who should have manifested a sense of control of the situation. In addition, it should be remembered, that several later writers indicated repeatedly that pestilence often followed the devastation of the land that, in turn caused shortness or total disappearance of the necessary provisions and the ensuing famines, with population displacement and lack of crops. “They had not been many days in Attica before the plague first broke out among the Athenians.”1 ← xv | xvi →

Previously attacks of the plague had been reported from several other places in the vicinity of Lemnos and other localities, “but there was no agreement about the disease being so virulent anywhere else or causing so many deaths as it did in Athens.” The writer, at this point, makes a remark on the action of the doctors who, in his opinion, were “quite incapable of treating the disease because of their ignorance in the treating methods.” But at that time in history, no effective method to cure the disease had yet been found and even the “mortality among the doctors was the highest of all, since they came more frequently in contact with the sick.”

Thus, being all human intervention useless in a rather confused and disoriented situation, the minds of the people addressed themselves to the divine. But the author says: “Equally useless were prayers made in the temples, consultation of oracles and so forth, indeed in the end people were so overcome by their sufferings that they paid no further attention to such things.” One witnesses this form of disenchantment, skepticism and sense of distress in other, later epidemics, among different people and different countries.

Probably hypothesizing on popular beliefs, the narrator indicates the plague originated in Ethiopia, in Upper Egypt and spread from there into the rest of Egypt, Libya and much of the territory of Persia. In the city of Athens it appeared all of a sudden and the early cases were among the population of Piraeus, where there were no wells at that time so that it was supposed by the citizens that the Peloponnesians had poisoned the main reservoirs. Later, however, it appeared also in the upper city, and by this time the mortality rate was greatly increasing in size.

Should the information about Ethiopia, upper Egypt as well as Libya be correct, one might suspect that the infection could have been brought to Piraeus, the port of Athens, by rats infesting the numerous ships that crossed the Mediterranean Sea from northern Africa to Greece.

That year, as is generally admitted, was particularly free from all other kinds of plague in the end. In other cases, however, there seemed to be no reason for the attacks. People in perfect health suddenly began to have burning feelings in the head; their eyes became red and inflamed; inside their mouths there was bleeding from the throat and tongue and the breath became unnatural and unpleasant. The next symptoms were sneezing and hoarseness of voice, and before long the pain settled on the chest and was accompanied by coughing. Next the stomach was affected with ache and vomiting of every kind of bile that has been given a name by the medical profession, all this being accompanied by great pain and difficulty. In most cases there were attacks of ineffectual retching, producing violent spasms; this sometimes ended with this stage of the disease, but sometimes continued long afterwards. … The skin was rather reddish and livid, breaking out into small postules and ulcers. But inside there was a feeling of burning so that people could not bear the touch even of the lightest linen clothing, but wanted to be completely naked, and indeed most of all would have liked to plunge into cold water. … ← xvi | xvii →

In the period when the disease was at its height, the body showed surprising power of resistance to all the agony so that there was still some strength left in the seventh or eighth day which was the time when in most cases death came from the internal fever. But if people survived this critical period, then the disease descended to the bowels, producing violent ulcerations and uncontrollable diarrhea so that most of them died later as a result of the weakness caused by this. … It affected the genitals, the fingers and the toes, and many of those who recovered lost the use of these members; some too, went blind. There were some also who, when they first began to get better, suffered from a total loss of memory, not knowing who they were themselves and being unable to recognize their friends. … Words indeed fail one when one tries to give a general picture of this disease; and as far as the sufferings of individuals, they seemed almost beyond the capacity of human nature to endure.

Here in particular is a point where the plague showed itself to be something quite different from ordinary diseases: though there were many dead bodies lying about unburied, the birds and animals that eat human flesh either did not come near them or, if they did taste the flesh, died of it afterwards. Evidence for this may be found in the fact that there was a complete disappearance of all birds of prey: they were not to be seen either round the bodies or anywhere else. But dogs, being domestic animals, provided the best opportunity of observing this effect of the plague.

This description brings to mind the episode of the pigs in Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron.

As for the psychological conditions of the citizens affected by the epidemic, the description focuses on the despair into which people fell when they realized they had caught the plague:

Those who had had the plague were the persons who could understand and console the sick and their despair. They knew what the victims were going through ← xvii | xviii → and, at the same time, were aware of being immune and of running no risk since a second infection never ended in death.

Despair and neglect brought about also a desire to cast off social restraints because people, not knowing what would happen to them next, became indifferent to every rule of religion or law. The city of Athens, as a consequence, saw the beginning of a state of unprecedented lawlessness: people indulged in inappropriate acts, spent money immoderately, forgot any restraint.

What was actually happening seemed to fit in well with the words of this oracle; certainly the plague broke out directly after the Peloponnesian invasion, and never affected the Peloponnese at all; or not seriously; its full force was felt at Athens, and, after Athens, in the most densely populated of the other towns.

In A History of Greece to the Death of Alexander the Great, by B. Bury and Russell L. Meiggs, we read that

Note

1. A situation that will be recurring in other plague epidemics as well as in the case of the pestilence of Milan of 1630. ← xviii | xix →

Bibliography

Bury, J. B., Meiggs, R. L. A History of Greece to the Death of Alexander the Great. St. Martin’s Press, 1975.

Drury, J. V. History of the Greeks. Napoli, 1859.

Lioy, D. History of the Greeks (Tr.). Napoli, 1859, Milano, 1967.

Thucydides. History of the Peloponnesian War. Penguin, 1954.

| xxi →

The Plague of Justinian

The Plague of Justinian was described by the historian Procopius: it occurred in A.D. 541–542. Born in Caesarea, Procopius studied rhetoric, philosophy and law at Gaza. Later he went to Constantinople (Byzantium). In 527, when general Belisarius became the commander of the troops in Dara against the Persians, Procopius became the adviser of the renowned general. In that capacity he took part in the Iberic campaign, 526–532 against the Visigoths and in 533–534 against the Vandals. Procopius was again with Belisarius during the latter’s campaign against the Goths, 535–540. Returning to Constantinople with the general he was an eyewitness of the plague epidemic that struck the capital in a.d. 542.

In 551 he wrote History of the Wars, in seven books where he dealt with the wars that he witnessed. Upon the Emperor’s request, he wrote also On the Edifices, a glorification of the Emperor’s monumental public works. He wrote also a Secret History, a rather critical document on Emperor Justinian and Theodora that became known several centuries after the author’s death.

In Book II, xxii of the History of the Wars, the author begins the description of the epidemic indicating the power of the disease and the enormous number of victims, “a pestilence … by which the whole human race came near to being annihilated.” This remark is followed by a rather sharp criticism about the official statements emanating from the authorities: ← xxi | xxii →

However, for this particular epidemic, the author remarks that “it is quite impossible either to express in words or to conceive in thought any explanation, except indeed to refer it to God.” The reasons for the peculiarity of this case were multiple and the historian declares them point by point.

Usually differences in age, social standing, attitude and character were determining factors in several occurrences, but in this case “the differences availed naught. Now let each one express his own judgement … both sophist and astrologer, but as for me, I shall proceed to tell where this disease originated and the manner in which it destroyed men.” The places that the epidemic affected were Egypt, Palestine, and from there “it spread over the whole world, always moving forward and travelling at times favorable to it.” It invested places here and there “fearing lest some corner of the earth might escape it.” “It affected men in different fashions, came and went as it pleased, it disappeared and then returned in every possible location and manner sparing no one.” Eventually it reached Byzantium “in the middle of spring” where it happened that

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Details

Pages
XXXVI, 388
Year
2018
ISBN (PDF)
9781433151538
ISBN (ePUB)
9781433151545
ISBN (MOBI)
9781433151552
ISBN (Hardcover)
9781433151521
DOI
10.3726/b14047
Language
English
Publication date
2018 (October)
Published
New York, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Oxford, Wien, 2018. XXXVI, 388 pp.

Biographical notes

Vincenzo Traversa (Author)

Vincenzo Traversa, a United States citizen, was born and educated in Italy. He has taught Italian language and literature at UCLA, Stanford University, and the University of Kansas. He holds a doctorate in English language and literature from the University of Naples and a Ph.D. in Romance languages and literatures from UCLA. He is Professor Emeritus of Italian and Humanities at California State University, East Bay, where he served as chairman of the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures for thirteen years. His works include Parola e Pensiero; Idioma in Prospettiva; Frequency Dictionary of Italian Words (coauthor); Racconti di Alberto Moravia; Luigi Capuana: Critic and Novelist; The Laude in the Middle Ages (Peter Lang, 1994); Giovanni Boccaccio, Theseid of the Nuptials of Emilia (Teseida delle nozze di Emilia) (Peter Lang, 2002); Three Italian Epistolary Novels: Foscolo, De Meis, Piovene—Translations, Introductions, and Backgrounds (Peter Lang, 2005); and the complete translation into English of Natalino Sapegno’s Storia Letteraria del Trecento (A Literary History of the Fourteenth Century) (Peter Lang, 2016). The Italian government awarded him the Cross of Knight in the Order of Merit, and he was honored in the 2000 edition of Who’s Who Among America’s Teachers.

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