Giovanni Boccaccio, Decameron - Florence |
While Dante has been well-known to non-Italian audiences for centuries, Giovanni Boccaccio has enjoyed a new popularity thanks to the setting of his Decameron during the 1348 plague. With the Black Death as a background, the Decameron consists of one hundred tales told by ten Florentine noblemen and women who have fled the city for ten days in order to find respite and peace in the Tuscan hillsides. Although many of the stories take place in Florence, there are also many others that taken place in various small towns and further cities. You can find the Decameron as well as history and commentary at the Decameron Web).
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Born in Nuoro on the island of Sardinia, Grazia Deledda was the second woman and second Italian to be awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. Her stories frequently address the lives and customs of the Sardinian people, through love affairs, religious conflicts, and suffering. Reeds in the Wind recounts the story of three sisters from the noble Pintor family, who try desperately to hold onto their family home despite financial decline. The arrival of the son of the deceased fourth Pintor sister opening up a log-hidden family secret. In Deledda’s Sardinia fairies and sprites coexist with religious traditions, and the very land itself seems to speak through storms, streams, and forests.
Reading Deledda is to take a pilgrimage to Sardinia, to listen to the earth speak, “the laughter and tears of the world.” Take a virtual tour of Sardinia’s amazing beaches, just because, then visit Deledda’s birthplace in Nuoro, now a museum. Just over a half hour’s drive east from Nuoro, the town of Galtellì, which today celebrates itself as the setting for Reeds in the Wind, offers a literary park that traces various landmarks corresponding to places in Deledda’s book. And perhaps, if you time it right, you may even encounter some of the ghosts and spirits that wander through the surrounding lands. |
Grazie Deledda, Canne nel Vento/Reeds in the Wind -
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