Tuesday, April 26, 2016

Jane Tylus Lectures on Secrets of Siena

Last Thursday, April 21, the Department of Romance Languages and Literature invited Jane Tylus, a visiting professor in the Italian department at Yale, to talk about her newly published book, “Siena, City of Secrets.”
“[Her work is] an exemplary hybrid between academic text, intellectual memoir, and travelogue,” said Assistant Professor of Italian, and Medieval Studies Francesco Marco Aresu.
Over the course of two hours, Tylus introduced and described the various obstacles that she encountered in the writing of her book. Tylus shared her personal relationship with the medieval town and through the help of a slideshow took those in attendance on a virtual tour of Siena. Although she described the physical characteristics of the city at length, she seemed even more amazed by the culture and hospitable nature of its residents.

'Passion of Dolssa'

Author Julie Berry's  most recent young adult novel, "The Passion of Dolssa" , was released April 12. The book is set in the 1200s and describes the lives of a group of people in France during the Catholic Crusades.
Dolssa, the protagonist and novel's namesake, is introduced early in the book and is immediately established as a spiritual woman who would go to any lengths to know God better. A friar has labeled her as a heretic, so Dolssa must run for her life. A tavern-keeper and matchmaker named Botille finds Dolssa on the brink of death, takes her in, nurses her back to health and discovers that Dolssa has healing powers. But it becomes clear that neither Dolssa nor Botille is safe from the wrath of the friar and the church.

11 Books Inspired by Shakespeare

It’s been 400 years since William Shakespeare shuffled off his mortal coil on April 23, 1616. To honor the Bard of Avon, we’ve compiled a list of some of the greatest novels influenced by his vast endowment of words. From comedy to tragedy, family foibles to mistaken identity, and every facet of love from the bitter to the sweet, perhaps no one else in the past four centuries has left such a compelling and malleable legacy for writers, and readers, to sink their teeth into ---> HuffPost Books