Sidney Alexander is the author of fifteen books on Renaissance history and art, as well as novels, poetry, plays, and criticism. The American Literary Translators Association honored his critical edition of The Complete Poems of Michelangelo as the Outstanding Literary Translation of 1991, and his edition of Guicciardini's History of Italy (Princeton paperback) received the PEN Award for Translation in 1970. His other honors include the Maxwell Anderson...

"Winner of the 1998 Poetry in Translation Award, PEN American Center" Eamon Grennan has published three collections of poetry: What Light There Is & Other Poems, As If It Matters, and So It Goes. He has a degree in English and Italian from University College, Dublin, and a doctorate in English from Harvard University. A native of Ireland, he divides his time between there and Poughkeepsie, New York, where he is the Dexer M. Ferry, Jr., Professor of...

"One of the earliest literary works to be written in Middle English and one of the first comic poems in the English language, The Owl and the Nightingale (1189-1216) is an anonymous work that describes a debate between two birds. In arguing about such topics as love, marriage, and nesting habits, the owl and the nightingale address issues that remain relevant to contemporary society, such as identity, cultural background, class distinctions, and the...

Late in life, Meng Chiao (a.d. 751-814) developed an experimental poetry of virtuosic beauty, a poetry that anticipated landmark developments in the modern Western tradition by a millennium. With the T'ang Dynasty crumbling, Meng's later work employed surrealist and symbolist techniques as it turned to a deep introspection. This is truly major work, work that may be the most radical in the Chinese tradition. And though written more than a thousand...