Mark Musa

"Mark Musa, in editing and translating Petrarch's Canzoniere, has performed a wonderful service to the English-speaking reader. Here, in one volume, are included the poet's own selection of the best lyric verse he wrote throughout his life, accompanied by brief but useful notes . . . " —Chronicles "As well as skillful and fluent verse renderings of the 366 lyrics that make up this milestone in the development of Western poetic tradition, Musa offers copious and up-to-date annotation to each poem . . . along with a substantial, sensitive, and intelligent introduction that is genuinely helpful for the first-time reader and thought provoking for Petrarch scholars and other medievalists." —Choice The 366 poems of Petrarch's Canzoniere represent one of the most influential works in Western literature. Varied in form, style, and subject matter, these "scattered rhymes" contains metaphors and conceits that have been absorbed into the literature and language of love. In this bilingual edition, Mark Musa provides verse translations, annotations, and an introduction co-authored with Barbara Manfredi.

The publication of the first two volumes of the six-volume Divine Comedy brings readers Mark Musa's vivid verse translation of the Inferno. Musa has revised his earlier version, long cited as the most accessible and reliable of the English translations. The dual-language first volume presents Musa's translation with facing Italian text. Students of translation theory and comparative literature - and the general reader - will delight in the opportunity to read this fresh, crisp translation against the original Italian verse. Musa's lifetime study of the Inferno has been compiled in the second volume, an extensive Commentary, where Musa examines and discusses the critical commentary of other Dante scholars and presents his own ideas and interpretations, shedding light on Dante's text as well as on his own translation.

The Paradise, which Dante called the sublime canticle, is perhaps the most ambitious book of The Divine Comedy. In this climactic segment, Dante's pilgrim reaches Paradise and encounters the Divine Will. The poet's mystical interpretation of the religious life is a complex and exquisite conclusion to his magnificent trilogy. Mark Musa's powerful and sensitive translation preserves the intricacy of the work while rendering it in clear, rhythmic English. His extensive notes and introductions to each canto make accessible to all readers the diverse and often abstruse ingredients of Dante's unparalleled vision of the Absolute: elements of Ptolemaic astronomy, medieval astrology and science, theological dogma, and the poet's own personal experiences.