Italská renesanční literatura. Antologie – Černý Václav, Pelán Jiří (2020)

This anthology of Italian Renaissance literature appears sixty years after work on its first phase ended in 1959 under the editorship of Václav Černý, a professor of comparative literature at the Faculty of Arts of Charles University. The ambitious project became known only after a bibliography of his work was published in 1997. Following various complications surrounding the unfinished manuscript, Václav Černý’s former student Jiří Pelán took up the anthology as his legacy. To realize the project, he had to complete and expand its concept and take on the role of chief translator as well as editor. The resulting work presents readers with a comprehensive and vivid picture of the Italian literary Renaissance from the 14th to the 16th century. It encompasses every genre of prose, poetry and drama, including epic, lyric, novella, moralistic, comic, love, philosophical, religious, political, utopian, historical and scientific writing. Twenty-two translators worked on this monumental project, one of the largest undertaken by the publisher, not least because of its scope. As Václav Černý put it, the whole modern world has its roots in the Renaissance. The contents are in Czech.