A groundbreaking translation of the epic work of one of the great minds of the nineteenth century Giacomo Leopardi was the greatest Italian poet of the nineteenth century and was recognized by readers from Nietzsche to Beckett as one of the towering literary figures in Italian history. To many, he is the finest Italian poet after Dante. (Jonathan Galassi's translation of Leopardi's Canti was published by FSG in 2010.) He was also a prodigious scholar of classical literature and philosophy, and a voracious reader in numerous ancient and modern languages. For most of his writing career, he kept an immense notebook, known as the Zibaldone, or "hodge-podge," as Harold Bloom has called it, in which Leopardi put down his original, wide-ranging, radically modern responses to his reading. His comments about religion, philosophy, language, history, anthropology, astronomy, literature, poetry, and love are unprecedented in their brilliance and suggestiveness, and the Zibaldone, which was only published at the turn of the twentieth century, has been recognized as one of the foundational books of modern culture. Its 4,500-plus pages have never been fully translated into English until now, when a team under the auspices of Michael Caesar and Franco D'Intino of the Leopardi Centre in Birmingham, England, have spent years producing a lively, accurate version. This essential book will change our understanding of nineteenth-century culture. This is an extraordinary, epochal publication.

For most of his writing career, Leopardi kept an immense notebook, known as the Zibaldone, in which he recorded his original, wide-ranging, radically modern comments about religion, philosophy, language, history, anthropology, astronomy, literature, poetry, and love. The Zibaldone has been recognized as one of the foundational books of modern culture.

Giacomo Leopardi was the greatest Italian poet of the nineteenth century and was recognized by readers, from Nietzsche to Beckett, as one of the towering literary figures in Italian history. To many, he is the finest Italian poet after Dante. To many, he is the finest Italian poet after Dante. He was also a prodigious scholar of classical literature and philosophy, and a voracious reader in numerous ancient and modern languages. For most of his writing career, he kept an immense notebook, known as the Zibaldone, or 'hodgepodge,' as Harold Bloom has called it, in which he put down his original, wide-ranging, radically modern responses to his reading. Published at the turn of the twentieth century, it has been recognized as one of the foundational books of modern culture, and its 4,500-plus pages have never been fully translated into English until now. A team led by of Michael Caesar and Franco D'Intino, of the Leopardi Centre in Birmingham, has spent years producing this lively, accurate version.This essential book will change our understanding of the origins of modern culture. It is an extraordinary, epochal publication. 'Although all things great and beautiful and alive have been extinguished from the world,our inclination toward them remains. Though we may be denied these things, nothing has or ever could stop us from wanting them. Young people have not lost that longing which drives them to seek a life for themselves and to scorn nothingness and monotony.'

Alongside his monumental Notebooks and the poems collected in Canti, which make him one of Italy's greatest and best-loved poets, Giacomo Leopardi penned a number of fictional pieces, mostly in the form of gently humorous dialogues, in which he dealt with philosophical ideas and many of the metaphysical questions that preoccupied his restless spirit.First published in 1827 and here presented in a new translation by J.G. Nichols along with Thoughts, Leopardi's own selected pearls of wisdom and gems of social observation, this volume will enchant both those who are familiar with and those who are new to the works of Italy's last great polymath.

Revisiting Gramsci’s Notebooks offers a rich collection of studies addressing the thought of Antonio Gramsci, one of the most significant intellects of the twentieth century, from a global network of scholars confronting the actuality of our ‘great and terrible’ world.

Leopardi’s atheism has always been and remains a contentious issue. It has been condemned, denied, and vindicated in equal measure. This volume of essays is the first in English to address the issue directly by examining the development and complex nature of Leopardi’s atheism in the context of the religious beliefs as well as the atheism of his age. There are chapters on the shift in his writings from religious believer to atheist, from an early draft of ‘Christian hymns’ to the later draft of a hymn to Ahriman, god of evil, and on the biblical language Leopardi continued to use in fashioning his first-person voice; on his empiricism, materialism, and relativism, key philosophical themes of significance to religious belief; comparative chapters on Leopardi and Shelley, who was in many ways a kindred spirit, and on Leopardi and the religious revival in Germany through the filtering lens of Madame de Staël; and finally a chapter on Cesare Luporini whose critical studies have been a focus for contemporary debate on Leopardi’s atheism. The first English translation of Leopardi’s satire I nuovi credenti, written in response to the revival of philosophical spiritualism in Naples, appears in an Appendix. Leopardi’s distinct identity as a poet-philosopher has attracted a good deal of attention in Italy although he is virtually ignored outside Italian culture. In the last 20 years he has been increasingly recognised as a key figure of modern western culture, as witnessed by the number of translations of his notebooks, the Zibaldone di pensieri. This study of Leopardi’s atheism appears alongside a new complete English translation of the Zibaldone. It provides, from the perspective of his atheism, an understanding of the complexity and intellectual lucidity of his thought and of the questions all his writings continue to pose for 21st-century readers.

In The Enigma of Art. On the provenance of Artistic Creation Gino Zaccaria offers a meditation on art in light of its ancient Greek sense and of its task inaugurated by “artist-thinkers” like Cézanne, Boccioni and van Gogh.

Giacomo Leopardi was the greatest Italian poet of the nineteenth century and was recognized by readers from Nietzsche to Beckett as one of the towering literary figures in Italian history. To many, he is the finest Italian poet after Dante. Leopardi was also a prodigious scholar of classical literature and philosophy, and a voracious reader in numerous ancient and modern languages. For most of his writing career, he kept an immense notebook, known as the Zibaldone, or "hodgepodge," as Harold Bloom has called it, in which he put down his original, wide-ranging, radically modern responses to his reading. His comments about religion, philosophy, language, history, anthropology, astronomy, literature, poetry, and love are unprecedented in their brilliance and suggestiveness, and the Zibaldone, which was only published at the turn of the twentieth century, has been recognized as one of the foundational books of modern culture. Its 4,500-plus pages have never been fully translated into English until now, when a team led by of Michael Caesar and Franco D'Intino of the Leopardi Centre in Birmingham have spent years producing a lively, accurate version. This essential book will change our understanding of nineteenth-century culture. Giacomo Leopardi (1798-1837), Italy's first and greatest modern poet, was also a critic, philosopher and philologist. His enormous Zibaldone, or philosophical and critical notebook, which many consider one of the great books of the 19th century, was published in Penguin Classics in 2013.

Thirteen original essays examine the conceptual history of evil in the west: from ancient Hebrew literature and Greek drama to Darwinism and Holocaust theory. Thirteen reflections contextualize the philosophical developments by looking at evil through the eyes of animals, poets, mystics, witches, librettists, film directors, and tech executives.