This book examines the Bible and its medieval and modern rewritings. It looks at some of the most beautiful and intriguing scenes from the Old and New Testament and the direct or indirect Re-Scriptures of these by writers such as Chaucer, Shakespeare, and T.S. Eliot as well as by ancient exegesis, catacomb frescoes, and church paintings.

The Bible and Its Rewritings

Literature & Fiction

Boitani, Piero

Weston, Anita

History & Criticism

Oxford University Press

Flight has always fascinated human minds, but until a century ago it remained a dream—the exclusive domain of birds, gods, and mythological heroes. From the myths of the ancients to the poetry of Pindar and Yeats, Winged Words traces the imprint of the human impulse to fly from premodern times to the age of terrorism in both literature and history.Piero Boitani begins his analysis with an account of the way the myths of Pegasus and Icarus have persisted from classical to twentieth-century politics and literature. He then takes up the figure of Hermes; the roles of halcyons and eagles in classical, biblical, and later literatures; and literary response to Pieter Brueghel’s The Fall of Icarus. Honing in on modern figures and concerns, Boitani also offers a fascinating discussion of author-pilot Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and concludes with a meditation on the flight of the hijacked airliners on 9/11. Throughout, Winged Word brings a remarkable range of men of action, politicians, theologians, writers, and artists into dialogue with each other: Shakespeare with T. S. Eliot, Horace with Ovid, Leonardo with Milton, Leopardi with Mallarmé, Saint-Exupéry with Faulkner and Rilke, and the Ulysses of Homer with the Ulysses of Dante. Ultimately, by showing how writers and fliers have looked to the ancients for inspiration, Boitani testifies to the modern relevance of poetry and the classics.

Winged Words: Flight in Poetry and History

University of Chicago Press

In this slim, poetically powerful volume, Piero Boitani develops his earlier work in The Bible and Its Rewritings, focusing on Shakespeare’s “rescripturing” of the Gospels. Boitani persuasively urges that Shakespeare read the New Testament with great care and an overall sense of affirmation and participation, and that many of his plays constitute their own original testament, insofar as they translate the good news into human terms. In Hamlet and King Lear, he suggests, Shakespeare’s "New Testament" is merely hinted at, and faith, salvation, and peace are only glimpsed from far away. But in Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale, and The Tempest, the themes of compassion and forgiveness, transcendence, immanence, the role of the deity, resurrection, and epiphany are openly, if often obliquely, staged. The Christian Gospels and the Christian Bible are the signposts of this itinerary. Originally published in 2009, Boitani's Il Vangelo Secondo Shakespeare was awarded the 2010 De Sanctis Prize, a prestigious Italian literary award. Now available for the first time in an English translation, The Gospel according to Shakespeare brings to a broad scholarly and nonscholarly audience Boitani's insights into the current themes dominating the study of Shakespeare's literary theology. It will be of special interest to general readers interested in Shakespeare’s originality and religious perspective.

Gospel according to Shakespeare, The

Religion & Spirituality

University of Notre Dame Press

Genius to Improve an Invention: Literary Transitions

The Genius to Improve an Invention derives its title from John Dryden’s phrase for the British tendency to take up literary masterpieces from the past and “perfect” them. Distinguished literary scholar Piero Boitani adopts Dryden’s notion as a framework for exploring ways in which classical and medieval texts, scenes, and themes have been rewritten by modern authors. Boitani focuses on a concept of literary transition that takes into account both T.S. Eliot’s idea of “tradition and individual talent” and Harold Bloom’s “anxiety of influence.” In five elegant essays he examines a wide range of authors and texts, including Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Shakespeare, Chaucer, Voltaire, Goethe, Sartre, Dante, and Keats. Appearing for the first time in an English translation, The Genius to Improve an Invention will appeal to anyone interested in the Western literary tradition. “The Genius to Improve an Invention is both substantial and graceful–a fascinating journey through some of the greatest works of Western literature, with a guide who is at once learned and entertaining, impassioned and moving.” —Jill Mann, University of Notre Dame “This book deserves the attention of all who are interested in the processes of literary continuity and change.” —Frank Kermode, King’s College, Cambridge University “The Genius to Improve an Invention is supported with a thorough theoretical awareness and a flexible intelligence enabling Boitani to move comfortably within a vast array of texts and thus take the reader on a fascinating literary journey. Through his pressing and detailed argumentations, the author suggests original approaches to some of the great works of European literature—each of them is considered as a solution to a specific problem and, at the same time, as a probative argument in favor of applied rationality. Reading these essays calls to mind what Henry James once said, ‘all the pieces of the game [are] on the table together and each unconfusedly and contributively placed, as triumphantly scientific.’” —Mario Lavagetto, University of Bologna

The Genius to Improve an Invention derives its title from John Dryden’s phrase for the British tendency to take up literary masterpieces from the past and “perfect” them. Distinguished literary scholar Piero Boitani adopts Dryden’s notion as a framework for exploring ways in which classical and medieval texts, scenes, and themes have been rewritten by modern authors. Boitani focuses on a concept of literary transition that takes into account both T.S. Eliot’s idea of “tradition and individual talent” and Harold Bloom’s “anxiety of influence.” In five elegant essays he examines a wide range of authors and texts, including Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Shakespeare, Chaucer, Voltaire, Goethe, Sartre, Dante, and Keats. Appearing for the first time in an English translation, The Genius to Improve an Invention will appeal to anyone interested in the Western literary tradition.

This is a wide-ranging and detailed study of English narrative verse in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Piero Boitani describes and analyses the undisputed masterpieces of narrative (such as the works of the Gawain poet, Langland, Gower and Chaucer), as well as the anonymous romances and specimens of religious and comic narrative which form the background to the better-known poems. The book is divided by literary genres or structural systems: chapters on the religious, comic and romance traditions are followed by a discussion of dream and visionary narratives and a chapter on story collections including those of Gower. The rest of the book is devoted to Chaucer, who mastered all these types.

English Medieval Narrative in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries

British & Irish

Cambridge University Press

This is a wide-ranging and detailed study of English narrative verse in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Piero Boitani describes and analyses the undisputed masterpieces of narrative (such as the works of the Gawain poet, Langland, Gower and Chaucer), as well as the anonymous romances and specimens of religious and comic narrative which form the background to the better-known poems. The book is divided by literary genres or structural systems: chapters on the religious, comic and romance traditions are followed by a discussion of dream and visionary narratives and a chapter on story collections including those of Gower. The rest of the book is devoted to Chaucer, who mastered all these types.

Members of the Florentine family of the Donati feature prominently in Dante's Divine Comedy. Their presence is explored by Piero Boitani, as a 'comedy' within the Comedy, in close readings of the three major episodes in which they appear, one for each of Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso.

Dante's Poetry of Donati: The Barlow Lectures on Dante Delivered at University College London, 17-18 March 2005: No. 7: The Barlow Lectures on Dante ... for Italian Studies Occasional Papers, 7)

Routledge

The World Machine is the second volume Piero Boitani devotes to the way in which the sciences and the arts interact when it comes to modern consideration of the stars and the cosmos (the first, also published in English by Nova Science Publishers, is entitled Looking Upwards: Stars in Ancient and Medieval Cultures). This is not a history of astronomy or astrophysics, but the story arranged in chronological order of how humans have reacted to fundamental changes in astronomy by means of poetry, narrative, painting, architecture, and music over the last five hundred years. This time, the story is basically European (and American), as all the relevant scientific discoveries were made in Europe, and it is the European imaginaire that dominates world culture (non-European images of the universe are dealt with in Looking Upwards). The historical development of this image and of the ideas that contribute to its formation is rather complex and diversified, but two major turning points are clearly identifiable one lies between the sixteenth and seventeenth century, and one at the very beginning of the twentieth century. Concerning the former, the observation of the sky was revolutionized by the telescope. Galileo, Kepler and Newton could thus base their new models of the universe on much more precise experiences, and mathematics became the new language of astronomy. The cosmos increasingly tended to be viewed as a machine, a mechanism like a clock (hence the books title). Between the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century the second scientific revolution took place. The instruments became so refined that they began to detect increasingly remote objects, and the phenomena found in the sky, as well as their behavior, no longer fully responded to Newtonian laws. New theories relativity and quantum mechanics were elaborated, the mathematics needed for them becoming much more difficult for the layman, and the whole structure of matter, with the discovery of the atom, its constituent parts, and its particles was gradually uncovered. Things reached a critical moment with Heisenbergs and Hubbles formulation of, respectively, the uncertainty principle and of the increasing speed at which galaxies recede from us the further they are and finally with the conflict between relativity and quantum theories. Some recent poets (notably in South America) and many painters and musicians in Europe and North America have tried to describe this new cosmos, but the same happened after the first scientific revolution. In short, The Machine of the World recounts an exciting adventure whose protagonists are the likes of Tasso and Milton, Goethe and Wallace Stevens, Canaletto and Friedrich, Verdi and Puccini, Van Gogh and Schoenberg, Joyce and Thomas Mann.

The Machine of the World: The Modern Cosmos (Contemporary Cultural Studies)

Politics & Social Sciences

Anthropology

Nova Science Pub Inc

Boitani’s presentation of the classics is as entertaining and unexpected as it is informative. He invites the reader to discover the timeless beauty and wisdom of ancient literature, highlighting its profound and surprising connections to the present. 
With their emphasis on the mutability and fluidity of identity and matter, their examination of the power and position of women in society, and their enduring treatments of force and subjugation, fate and free will, the ethical life, hospitality, love, compassion, and mysticism, the classics play active roles in our lives and can help us refine our opinions and our values. 
Ranging from Homer to Tacitus, with Thucydides, Aristotle Sophocles, Cicero, and many others in between, Boitani’s A New Sublime is a fresh, inspiring reminder of the enduring importance and beauty of the classics of the Western canon.

A New Sublime: Ten Timeless Lessons on the Classics

Europa Compass

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Boitani, Piero. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Boitani, Piero

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Boitani, Piero. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Bible and Its Rewritings

Winged Words: Flight in Poetry and History

Gospel according to Shakespeare, The

Genius to Improve an Invention: Literary Transitions

Genius to Improve an Invention: Literary Transitions

English Medieval Narrative in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries

English Medieval Narrative in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries

Dante's Poetry of Donati: The Barlow Lectures on Dante Delivered at University College London, 17-18 March 2005: No. 7: The Barlow Lectures on Dante ... for Italian Studies Occasional Papers, 7)

The Machine of the World: The Modern Cosmos (Contemporary Cultural Studies)

A New Sublime: Ten Timeless Lessons on the Classics