Author: Italo Calvino
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 0544133501
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 119
Book Description
An empty suit of armor is the hero of this witty novella set in the Early Middle Ages by the acclaimed author of If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler. As a paladin in the court of Charlemagne, Agilulf is the very embodiment of valor and dedication to duty—but he is also a gleaming white suit of armor with nothing inside it. While he has stolen the heart of the female knight Bradamante, she in turn is loved by the young adventurer Rambaldo. When a challenge to Agilulf’s honor sends him on an expedition through France, England, and North Africa, Brandamante and Ramaldo follow close behind. Narrated by a nun with her own secrets to keep, this beloved novella explores the absurdities of medieval knighthood in a series of plot twists that are “executed with brilliance and brio” (Chicago Tribune).
The Complete Cosmicomics
Author: Italo Calvino
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 0544231937
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 367
Book Description
The complete collection of “nimble and often hilarious” short stories exploring the cosmos by the acclaimed author of Invisible Cities (Colin Dwyer, NPR). Italo Calvino’s beloved cosmicomics cross planets and traverse galaxies, speed up time or slow it down to the particles of an instant. Through the eyes of a “cosmic know-it-all” with the unpronounceable name of Qfwfq, Calvino explores natural phenomena and tells the story of the origins of the universe. Relating complex scientific and mathematical concepts to our everyday world, they are an indelible and delightful literary achievement. Originally published in Italian in three separate volumes—including the Asti d’Appello Prize-winning first volume, Cosmicomics—these thirty-four dazzling stories are collected here in one definitive English-language anthology. “Trying to describe such a diverse and entertaining mix, I have to admit, just as Calvino does so often, that my words fail here, too. There’s no way I—or anyone, really—can muster enough of them to quite capture the magic of these stories . . . Read this book, please.” —Colin Dwyer, NPR
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 0544231937
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 367
Book Description
The complete collection of “nimble and often hilarious” short stories exploring the cosmos by the acclaimed author of Invisible Cities (Colin Dwyer, NPR). Italo Calvino’s beloved cosmicomics cross planets and traverse galaxies, speed up time or slow it down to the particles of an instant. Through the eyes of a “cosmic know-it-all” with the unpronounceable name of Qfwfq, Calvino explores natural phenomena and tells the story of the origins of the universe. Relating complex scientific and mathematical concepts to our everyday world, they are an indelible and delightful literary achievement. Originally published in Italian in three separate volumes—including the Asti d’Appello Prize-winning first volume, Cosmicomics—these thirty-four dazzling stories are collected here in one definitive English-language anthology. “Trying to describe such a diverse and entertaining mix, I have to admit, just as Calvino does so often, that my words fail here, too. There’s no way I—or anyone, really—can muster enough of them to quite capture the magic of these stories . . . Read this book, please.” —Colin Dwyer, NPR
The Nonexistent Knight
Author: Italo Calvino
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 0544133501
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 119
Book Description
An empty suit of armor is the hero of this witty novella set in the Early Middle Ages by the acclaimed author of If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler. As a paladin in the court of Charlemagne, Agilulf is the very embodiment of valor and dedication to duty—but he is also a gleaming white suit of armor with nothing inside it. While he has stolen the heart of the female knight Bradamante, she in turn is loved by the young adventurer Rambaldo. When a challenge to Agilulf’s honor sends him on an expedition through France, England, and North Africa, Brandamante and Ramaldo follow close behind. Narrated by a nun with her own secrets to keep, this beloved novella explores the absurdities of medieval knighthood in a series of plot twists that are “executed with brilliance and brio” (Chicago Tribune).
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 0544133501
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 119
Book Description
An empty suit of armor is the hero of this witty novella set in the Early Middle Ages by the acclaimed author of If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler. As a paladin in the court of Charlemagne, Agilulf is the very embodiment of valor and dedication to duty—but he is also a gleaming white suit of armor with nothing inside it. While he has stolen the heart of the female knight Bradamante, she in turn is loved by the young adventurer Rambaldo. When a challenge to Agilulf’s honor sends him on an expedition through France, England, and North Africa, Brandamante and Ramaldo follow close behind. Narrated by a nun with her own secrets to keep, this beloved novella explores the absurdities of medieval knighthood in a series of plot twists that are “executed with brilliance and brio” (Chicago Tribune).
The Nonexistent Knight & The Cloven Viscount
The Nonexistent Knight & The Cloven Viscount
Author: Italo Calvino
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Authors, American
Languages : en
Pages : 266
Book Description
"Two novellas: the first, a parody of medieval knighthood told by a nun; the second, a fantasy about a nobleman bisected into his good and evil halves. Bravura pieces... executed with brilliance and brio."--Goodreads
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Authors, American
Languages : en
Pages : 266
Book Description
"Two novellas: the first, a parody of medieval knighthood told by a nun; the second, a fantasy about a nobleman bisected into his good and evil halves. Bravura pieces... executed with brilliance and brio."--Goodreads
The Nonexistent Knight. The Cloven Viscount
Understanding Italo Calvino
Author: Beno Weiss
Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press
ISBN: 9780872498587
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 260
Book Description
Highlights Calvino's fascination with folk tales, knights, social & political allegories, & science fiction.
Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press
ISBN: 9780872498587
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 260
Book Description
Highlights Calvino's fascination with folk tales, knights, social & political allegories, & science fiction.
Gawain and the Nonexistent Knight
Author: Joshua Bernatchez
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
This thesis examines Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Italo Calvino's The Nonexistent Knight as texts in which the protagonists are engaged on unique quests that force them to choose either physical dissolution or the dissolution of their sense of personal significance. The impossible decision suggests that human life and the significant "self' as a constructed idea are inextricably linked and of comparable value but may have contradictory survival conditions. Contextualized with reference to Charles Taylor, "selfhood" is necessarily linked to moral "horizons" against which such concepts become meaningful. The protagonists of the literary texts in question justifiably manifest a desire for their systems of self-interpretation to be stable and transcendent. However, such identity-conferring systems are problematic because they are subject to inherent indeterminacy and fluctuation. Consequently, the characters in both texts are forced to recognize the inaccessibility of perfectly stable meaning and the need for paradigms to be adaptable. Calvino's text dramatizes the importance of the paradigm personified by the nonexistent knight Agilulf. The model he represents, despite his inevitable dissolution, provides intelligible form to an otherwise empirically real but meaningless existence feared by the other characters and embodied by his squire Gurduloo. Similarly, Gawain is ultimately faced with the need to interpret the significance of his life in relative terms due to his inevitable inability to make his infallible chivalric reputation and his finite human character coincide. The texts, together, situate any surviving rational agency within the interpretative capacity for dealing with inherent paradox.
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
This thesis examines Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Italo Calvino's The Nonexistent Knight as texts in which the protagonists are engaged on unique quests that force them to choose either physical dissolution or the dissolution of their sense of personal significance. The impossible decision suggests that human life and the significant "self' as a constructed idea are inextricably linked and of comparable value but may have contradictory survival conditions. Contextualized with reference to Charles Taylor, "selfhood" is necessarily linked to moral "horizons" against which such concepts become meaningful. The protagonists of the literary texts in question justifiably manifest a desire for their systems of self-interpretation to be stable and transcendent. However, such identity-conferring systems are problematic because they are subject to inherent indeterminacy and fluctuation. Consequently, the characters in both texts are forced to recognize the inaccessibility of perfectly stable meaning and the need for paradigms to be adaptable. Calvino's text dramatizes the importance of the paradigm personified by the nonexistent knight Agilulf. The model he represents, despite his inevitable dissolution, provides intelligible form to an otherwise empirically real but meaningless existence feared by the other characters and embodied by his squire Gurduloo. Similarly, Gawain is ultimately faced with the need to interpret the significance of his life in relative terms due to his inevitable inability to make his infallible chivalric reputation and his finite human character coincide. The texts, together, situate any surviving rational agency within the interpretative capacity for dealing with inherent paradox.
Rewriting the Journey in Contemporary Italian Literature
Author: Cinzia Sartini Blum
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 0802097898
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 393
Book Description
Sartini Blum demonstrate that women writers and migrant authors in contemporary Italy present journeys as events that are beyond heroic modern exploration and postmodern fragmentation.
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 0802097898
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 393
Book Description
Sartini Blum demonstrate that women writers and migrant authors in contemporary Italy present journeys as events that are beyond heroic modern exploration and postmodern fragmentation.
Encyclopedia of Italian Literary Studies: A-J
Author: Gaetana Marrone
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1579583903
Category : Italian literature
Languages : en
Pages : 2258
Book Description
Publisher description
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1579583903
Category : Italian literature
Languages : en
Pages : 2258
Book Description
Publisher description
Twentieth-century Italian Literature in English Translation
Author: Robin Healey
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 9780802008008
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 648
Book Description
This bibliography lists English-language translations of twentieth-century Italian literature published chiefly in book form between 1929 and 1997, encompassing fiction, poetry, plays, screenplays, librettos, journals and diaries, and correspondence.
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 9780802008008
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 648
Book Description
This bibliography lists English-language translations of twentieth-century Italian literature published chiefly in book form between 1929 and 1997, encompassing fiction, poetry, plays, screenplays, librettos, journals and diaries, and correspondence.