Here Piero Boitani explores the areas of the tragic and the sublime in medieval literature by asking what medieval texts mean to modern readers. Professor Boitani, who has written widely on
medieval and comparative literature, studies tragic and sublime tensions in stories and scenes recounted by such major poets as Dante, Chaucer and Petrarch, as well as themes shared by writers
and philosophers and traditional poetic images. The result is a remarkable volume of studies in comparative European literature, which takes into account poems written in English, Italian and
other languages, and compares them with their classical and Biblical ancestors as well as with their modern descendants.
This learned and stimulating collection will be read by students and scholars in a range of disciplines, and by all those with an interest in the literature discussed.
