The Tragic and the Sublime in Medieval Literature

by Piero Boitani

Professor Boitani's latest book explores the areas of the tragic and the sublime in medieval literature by asking what medieval texts mean to modern readers. Boitani, who has written widely on medieval and comparative literature, 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. The result is a learned, stimulating, and wide-ranging volume of studies in comparative European literature, which takes into account poems written in English, Italian and other languages, and compares them with their classical and biblical ancestors as well as with their modern descendants.

352 pages, Hardcover

First published August 25, 1989

About the author

Piero Boitani (Roma, 1947) è un filologo, critico letterario e traduttore italiano.
Dantista e anglista, ha dedicato numerosi studi ai miti classici e alla Bibbia. È direttore letterario della Fondazione Lorenzo Valla.