The Oxford Companion to Italian Literature

Edited by Peter Hainsworth and David Robey

• 'I have consulted this book for almost a year for research, teaching, and editorial work, and in all cases, but especially for editing, it has proved an invaluable, user-friendly, and quick provider of reliable information ... an outstanding pioneering work ... a very fine volume that scholars will find indispensable.' - Modern Language Review
• 'The Oxford Companion to Italian Literature is an essential purchase for relevant libraries and will equally prove a critical reference source in Italian collections. The work can be very strongly recommended. ' - Chris Taylor, Curator French and Italian Collections, National Library of Scotland
• 'The entries are invariably clearly written, accurate, reliable and informative. They are thoroughly cross-referenced.' - Chris Taylor, Curator French and Italian Collections, National Library of Scotland
• 'Coverage is remarkably balanced between the different periods, taking in writers from Dante to Tabucchi.' - Chris Taylor, Curator French and Italian Collections, National Library of Scotland
• ' Scholars and students of Italian literature have been waiting for the appearance of an Oxford companion to Italian literature with a good deal of anticipation and no doubt impatience for several decades ... finally they have an Oxford Companion of their own to place on the reference shelf and one which lives up to the kudos of the sister volumes for French and German. They will no doubt be uncorking the Chianti in Italian departments around the English-speaking world. ' - Chris Taylor, Curator French and Italian Collections, National Library of Scotland
• '... impressive list of contributors ... a substantial achievement.' - Italian Studies
• ' It is the first - and therefore greatly to be welcomed - attempt to provide a reference work in English similar in scope to the Oxford Companions to French, German, and English literatures, as well as literature in translation. ' - Italian Studies
• 'This first Companion to Italian Literature to appear in English is as complete, reliable and useful as any such enterprise could be ... it contains nearly 2,400 articles which cover almost every writer of reputation active over a period of about nine centuries ... All aspects of literature are here, not only creative writers but also historians, philosophers, critics, throughout the ages. ' - Masolino D'Amico, Times Literary Supplement
• ' It is a delight to open the volume at random and read the first entry that catches the eye. Indeed, two copies of The Oxford Companion to Italian Literature are needed, one in the study and the other beside the bed. ' - Rivista (the Journal of the British-Italian Society)
• '... indispensable as a work of reference.' - Rivista (the Journal of the British-Italian Society)

• First comprehensive reference work in English on Italian Literature for both specialists and non-specialists
• Covers the whole of Italian literature - from the 13th century to the present - with generous coverage of contemporary writing
• Provides in-depth coverage of major figures from Dante and Machiavelli to Pirandello and Primo Levi
• Includes extensive entries on less well-known writers as well as writings by Italians in dialect and in other languages, notably Latin and Provençal
• Places writers and works in their wider social, historical, artistic, and political circumstances with a valuable range of contextual entries
• Cross-referenced throughout, with an Introduction, a Reader's Guide, a Chronology, and Maps

Edited by Peter Hainsworth, Professor of Italian, Oxford University and
David Robey, Professor of Italian, University of Reading