Guido Cavalcanti: The Other Middle Ages »

Maria Luisa Ardizzone is teaches medieval and contemporary Italian literature in the Department of Italian Studies at New York University.

While some English readers may not be familiar with Cavalcanti (d. 1300), the Italian poet is at the center of the Western canon as much as Dante—to whom he was a mentor—for Ardizzone (Italian literature, New York U.) and Ezra Pound. Uniquely, she views the author of Donna me prega on the nature of love (appended in Italian and English translation), through the lens of medieval science and his Averroes-influenced radical reading of Aristotle. Letters between Pound and a Cavalcanti scholar are appended. Annotation ©2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR