This book is centered on the Venetian humanist Pietro Bembo (1470-1547), on his ascent of Mount Etna in 1493, and above all on the striking artistic originality of the elegant Latin work that he wrote about his climb after his return to Venice in 1494: his De Aetna, published at the Aldine press in Venice in 1496.

The bestselling, prizewinning author of How to Live and At the Existentialist Café explores 700 years of writers, thinkers, scientists and artists, all trying to understand what it means to be truly human. If you are reading this, it’s likely you already have some affinity with humanism, even if you don’t think of yourself in those terms. You may be drawn to literature and the humanities. You may prefer to base your moral choices on fellow-feeling and responsibility to others rather than on religious commandments. Or you may simply believe that individual lives are more important than grand political visions or dogmas. If any of these apply, you are part of a long tradition of humanist thought, and you share that tradition with many extraordinary individuals through history who have put rational enquiry, cultural richness, freedom of thought and a sense of hope at the heart of their lives. Humanly Possible introduces us to some of these people, as it asks what humanism is and why it has flourished for so long, despite opposition from fanatics, mystics and tyrants. It is a book brimming with ideas, personalities and experiments in living – from the literary enthusiasts of the fourteenth century to the secular campaigners of our own time, from Erasmus to Esperanto, from anatomists to agnostics, from Christine de Pizan to Bertrand Russell, and from Voltaire to Zora Neale Hurston. It takes us on an irresistible journey, and joyfully celebrates open-mindedness, optimism, freedom and the power of the here and now—humanist values which have helped steer us through dark times in the past, and which are just as urgently needed in our world today. The bestselling, prizewinning author of How to Live and At the Existentialist Café explores 700 years of writers, thinkers, scientists and artists, all trying to understand what it means to be truly human.

This collection offers a cross-disciplinary exploration of the ways in which multilingual practices were embedded in early modern European literary culture, opening up a dynamic dialogue between contemporary multilingual practices and scholarly work on early modern history and literature. The nine chapters draw on translation studies, literary history, transnational literatures, and contemporary sociolinguistic research to explore how multilingual practices manifested themselves across different social, cultural and institutional spaces. The exploration of a diverse range of contexts allows for the opportunity to engage with questions around how individual practices shape national and transnational language practices and literatures, the impact of multilingual practices on identity formation, and their implications for creative innovations in bilingual and multilingual texts. Taken as a whole, the collection paves the way for future conversations on what early modern literary studies and present-day multilingualism research might learn from one another and the extent to which historical texts might supply precedents for contemporary multilingual practices. This book will be of particular interest to students and scholars in sociolinguistics, early modern studies in history and literature, and comparative literature.

For educated poets and readers in the Renaissance, classical literature was as familiar and accessible as the work of their compatriots and contemporaries – often more so. This volume seeks to recapture that sense of intimacy and immediacy, as scholars from both sides of the modern disciplinary divide come together to eavesdrop on the conversations conducted through allusion and intertextual play in works from Petrarch to Milton and beyond. The essays include discussions of Ariosto, Spenser, Du Bellay, Marlowe, the anonymous drama Caesars Revenge, Shakespeare and Marvell, and look forward to the grand retrospect of Shelley’s Adonais. Together, they help us to understand how poets across the ages have thought about their relation to their predecessors, and about their own contributions to what Shelley would call ‘that great poem, which all poets...have built up since the beginning of the world’.

Throughout the longue dureé of Western culture, how have people represented mountains as landscapes of the imagination and as places of real experience? In what ways has human understanding of mountains changed – or stayed the same? Mountain Dialogues from Antiquity to Modernity opens up a new conversation between ancient and modern engagements with mountains. It highlights the ongoing relevance of ancient understandings of mountain environments to the postclassical and present-day world, while also suggesting ways in which modern approaches to landscape can generate new questions about premodern responses. It brings together experts from across many different disciplines and periods, offering case studies on topics ranging from classical Greek drama to Renaissance art, and from early modern natural philosophy to nineteenth-century travel writing. Throughout, essays engage with key themes of temporality, knowledge, identity, and experience in the mountain landscape. As a whole, the volume suggests that modern responses to mountains participate in rhetorical and experiential patterns that stretch right back to the ancient Mediterranean. It also makes the case for collaborative, cross-period research as a route both for understanding human relations with the natural world in the past, and informing them in the present.

The Encyclopedia of Italian Literary Studies is a two-volume reference book containing some 600 entries on all aspects of Italian literary culture. It includes analytical essays on authors and works, from the most important figures of Italian literature to little known authors and works that are influential to the field. The Encyclopedia is distinguished by substantial articles on critics, themes, genres, schools, historical surveys, and other topics related to the overall subject of Italian literary studies. The Encyclopedia also includes writers and subjects of contemporary interest, such as those relating to journalism, film, media, children's literature, food and vernacular literatures. Entries consist of an essay on the topic and a bibliographic portion listing works for further reading, and, in the case of entries on individuals, a brief biographical paragraph and list of works by the person. It will be useful to people without specialized knowledge of Italian literature as well as to scholars.