Category

Literature

Stories in this category

• The pot of basil and Lisabetta's broken heart

  In Messina in the 1300s, a young woman named Lisabetta falls secretly in love with Lorenzo, a young servant of her wealthy mercha…

• The poet who descended into Hell

  In 1302, Dante Alighieri, prior of Florence and ambassador to the pope, was sentenced to perpetual exile on the false charge of b…

• Dracula: the son of the dragon and the nightmare of the West

  Bram Stoker, raised on ghost stories told by his mother during a long childhood illness, turned those childhood fears into the mo…

• The Odyssey: the hero's journey home

  The Odyssey, attributed to Homer and composed in the 8th century BC, tells of the journey home of Odysseus, king of Ithaca, after…

• The sailor who saw the future

  Fourteen years before the Titanic, another unsinkable liner sailed through the pages of a novel. Its name was Titan: the largest…

• Emily Brontë: the voice in the storm

  In 1847, under a male pseudonym, Emily Brontë published "Wuthering Heights". Critics found it scandalous: brutal, immoral, a tale…

• The lady of the mirror

  The lady of Shalott lives imprisoned in a tower, condemned to see the world only through the reflection of a mirror, weaving tape…

• The night that spawned a monster

  In the summer of 1816, remembered as the "year without a summer", due to the eruption of Mount Tambora, five young English people…

• The Brothers Grimm and the enchanted world of fairy tales

  The Brothers Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm, did not write their fairy tales for children. They were Romantic philologists who, in the…

• Emilia Bassano and the Shakespeare mystery

  Emilia Bassano, a woman of Italian origins, lived in Elizabethan London as the mistress of a powerful lord and a frequenter of th…

• The voice of Sheherazade: origin and secrets of "One Thousand and One Nights"

  "One Thousand and One Nights" is not a book with a single author, but a mosaic of stories originating from India and Persia. The…