‘… impressive list of contributors … a substantial achievement’, Italian Studies

Embracing the whole of Italian literature, from the early thirteenth century to the present, The Oxford Companion to Italian Literature takes a broad view of what constitutes literature, covering historical writing, travel writing, theatre, and philosophy as well as the novel, poetry, literary dialogues, and critical theory. Providing generous coverage of canonical figures — from Dante and Petrarch to Montale and Calvino — it also contains a wealth of short entries on significant minor figures. The Companion also explores Latin literature written by Italian authors — a major feature of Renaissance culture — and Italian dialect literature. A range of contextual entries places writers and works in their wider social, historical, artistic, and political circumstances.

Written by expert contributors, the entries reflect the current state of international scholarship, which has developed in many different and exciting directions in recent years.