La Vita Nuova - in English The New Life - is a poem by Dante Alighieri which expresses the virtues of Medieval courtship and love. First published in 1295 during the dawn of the Italian Renaissance period, this work discusses the praiseworthy aspects of courtship which first appeared during the Medieval era. Dante was a great admirer of this practice, feeling that the tradition elevated both love and courteous behaviour in a manner befitting an experience of such emotive depth. Dante first authored this book during his own association with Beatrice Portinari, a paramour who was to symbolise human love for the artist in both life and death. La Vita Nuova is distinct from other, later works by Dante in that it was authored in his native Italian, rather than the Latin he employed in The Divine Comedy and other works.

"A fresh, new version of a 1962 translation that has had enormous popularity in comparative literature classes. The Vita Nuova (the New Life) is a small book which relates in prose and often very beautiful verse the story of the youthful Dante's love for Beatrice. The esay which follows the translation provides new insights into this puzzling thirteenth-century work. Musa regards Dante's intention in this so-called "Book of Memory" as a cruel and comic commentary on the youthful lover. He argues that Dante, using the tradition of love poetry current in his time, points up the foolishness and shallowness of his protagonist, a self-centered and self-pitying youth who only occasionally in the progress of his suffering catches even a glimpse of the true nature of Love or his beloved. "The sensitive man who would realize a man's destiny must ruthlessly cut out of his heart the canker at its center [i.e. self-pity], the canker that the heart instinctively tends to cultivate." According to Musa, this is one of Dante's central ideas. Dante scholars, libraries, and students of the Italian classics will welcome this distinguished translation and its provocative commentary"--Back cover.

This biography of Italy's foremost writer and thinker weaves into a single thread the whole of Dante's life and works. As well as his masterpiece the Divina Commedia, his other works are also given considerable attention.

"e;Life of Dante"e; brings together the earliest accounts of Dante available, putting the celebratory essay of literary genius Giovanni Boccaccio together with the historical analysis of leading humanist Leonardo Bruni. Their writings, along with the other sources included in this volume, provide a wealth of insight and information into Dante's unique character and life, from his susceptibility to the torments of passionate love, his involvement in politics, scholastic enthusiasms and military experience, to the stories behind the greatest heights of his poetic achievements.Not only are these accounts invaluable for their subject matter, they are also seminal examples of early biographical writing. Also included in this volume is a biography of Boccaccio, perhaps as great an influence on world literature as Dante himself.

La Vita Nuova (1292–94) has many aspects. Dante’s libello, or “little book,” is most obviously a book about love. In a sequence of thirty-one poems, the author recounts his love of Beatrice from his first sight of her (when he was nine and she eight), through unrequited love and chance encounters, to his profound grief sixteen years later at her sudden and unexpected death. Linked with Dante’s verse are commentaries on the individual poems—their form and meaning—as well as the events and feelings from which they originate. Through these commentaries the poet comes to see romantic love as the first step in a spiritual journey that leads to salvation and the capacity for divine love. He aims to reside with Beatrice among the stars. David Slavitt gives us a readable and appealing translation of one of the early, defining masterpieces of European literature, animating its verse and prose with a fluid, lively, and engaging idiom and rhythm. His translation makes this first major book of Dante’s stand out as a powerful work of art in its own regard, independent of its “junior” status to La Commedia. In an Introduction, Seth Lerer considers Dante as a poet of civic life. “Beatrice,” he reminds us, “lives as much on city streets and open congregations as she does in bedroom fantasies and dreams.”