Three Italian Epistolary Novels looks at the development of a literary genre that flourished in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and counted among its illustrious authors Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding, Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. These translations of three Italian novels by Foscolo, De Meis, and Piovene never offered before in a single study reflect social, historical, and stylistic aspects through 150 years of Italian literature from the birth of a touching romantic story to the time of the new currents in Italy and the period of World War II. The book is particularly suited for studies in Italian, European, and comparative literature programs.

Autorentext

The Translator: Vincenzo Traversa, a United States citizen born and educated in Italy, 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 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); and Giovanni Boccaccio, Theseid of the Nuptials of Emilia (Teseida delle nozze di Emilia) (Peter Lang, 2002). 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.