Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374), one of the greatest of Italian poets, was also the leading spirit in the Renaissance movement to revive ancient Roman language and literature. Just …
The Oration by philosopher Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463–1494), to which later editors added the subtitle On the Dignity of Man, is the most famous text written in Italy at …
Michael Marullus (c. 1453/4–1500), born in Greece, began life as a mercenary soldier but became a prominent Neo-Latin poet and scholar who worked in Florence and Naples. He married …
Pietro Bembo (1470-1547), scholar and critic, was one of the most admired Latinists of his day. After some years at the court of Urbino, where he exchanged Platonic love letters …
Giovanni Gioviano Pontano (1429–1503) served five kings of Naples as a courtier, official, and diplomat, and earned even greater fame as a scholar, prose author, and poet. His …
Biondo Flavio (1392–1463), humanist and historian, was a pioneering figure in the Renaissance discovery of antiquity; famously, he was the author who popularized the term “Middle …
Teofilo Folengo (1491–1544) was born in Mantua and joined the Benedictine order, but became a runaway monk and a satirist of monasticism. In 1517 he published, under the pseudonym …
The five comedies included in this volume, three of which have never been translated into English, present a characteristic sampling of comic form as it was interpreted by some of …
The defeat of the Ottomans by the Holy League fleet at the Battle of Lepanto (1571) was among the most celebrated international events of the sixteenth century. This volume …
Cristoforo Landino (1424–1498), one of the great scholar-poets of the Renaissance, is best known today for his Platonizing commentaries on Dante and Vergil. His most substantial …
