Susanna Barsella

With a new foreword. Written in the fourteenth century by Italian author, poet and scholar Giovanni Boccaccio, the Decameron contains stories told by ten young Florentines who have fled the city to escape the Plague. Presented within the sophisticated structure of a surrounding frame story, the one hundred allegorical tales are shared through the voices of these people as they spend their nights regaling the company with tales intended to guide and comfort, from the erotic, sensual, and bawdy to the intellectual, philosophical and tragic. The work’s fundamental purpose is one of ethical instruction through the means of beautiful and entertaining prose, touching on themes of morality, fortune, human will, wit, virtue, female agency, and love won and lost. This is Boccaccio's masterpiece and is generally viewed as the work that confirmed his reputation as the founder of Italian prose literature. It is also one of the world's great literary masterpieces. Flame Tree Gothic Fantasy, Classic Stories and Epic Tales collections bring together the entire range of myth, folklore, epic literature and modern short fiction. Highlighting the roots of suspense, supernatural, science fiction and mystery stories, the books in Flame Tree Collections series are beautifully presented, perfect as a gift and offer a lifetime of reading pleasure.

Niccolo Acciaiuoli (1310-1365), rampollo di una potente famiglia fiorentina di uomini d'affari (e poi di alti prelati), amico di gioventu di Giovanni Boccaccio, fu Gran Siniscalco del regno di Napoli. Durante il regno di Giovanna d'Angio, fu al centro di una rete politico-diplomatica e culturale di respiro italiano se non addirittura mediterraneo. Tuttavia, la notorieta del personaggio, piu che alla sua straordinaria carriera di mercante e di spregiudicato tessitore di alleanze internazionali, e certamente legata alla fondazione di un immenso monastero certosino, costruito nei pressi del borgo del Galluzzo. La Certosa, nella cui cripta diversi esponenti della consorteria vennero seppelliti in sontuosi e raffinatissimi sepolcri, sarebbe rimasta sotto il patronato degli Acciaiuoli per secoli. Come affermo proprio Boccaccio, cercare con edifici perpetua fama era stato uno degli obiettivi ultimi di messer Niccolo.

As the first organic study on angelic operations in the Divine Comedy, this book puts Dante's angelology within the XIII century theological and philosophical debate on the nature and functions of separate substances. Highlighting the original fusion of classical and patristic traditions within the providential outline of the poem, it argues the centrality of angels in the Comedy's ethical-cosmological system and narrative strategy, opening new interpretations of figures such as the "Heavenly Messenger"; the Purgatory angels; and Beatrice.