Olimpia

Giambattista della PortaProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.2

Word count: 146K words
Chapters: 15

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.L'Olimpia by Giambattista della PortaAuthor: Porta, Giambattista della, 1535?-1615,Language: Italian, Class: PQ: Language and Literatures: Romance literatures: French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Release Date: Apr 26, 2008

Editor's review

L'Olimpia is a play by the Italian Renaissance polymath Giambattista della Porta, prepared by Project Gutenberg as a public-domain electronic text. Its value lies not in the modern readability of its plot but in the sample it offers of how sixteenth-century Italian literati used drama to explore identity, desire, and moral order. Della Porta is known for works on natural science and natural history, and his plays share an observational touch: the dialogue often embeds commentary on human nature and the natural world, giving the work a distinctive quality poised between scholarship and the stage. As an original Italian text, it preserves the language of its time and is a directly usable primary source for researchers in Renaissance drama, the evolution of Italian literary language, or comparative literature. General readers who wish to enter it need some foundation in Italian and a willingness to accept the narrative pace of classical drama. The electronic edition is convenient for searching and citation and is suitable as a course companion or textual basis for essay writing rather than as leisure reading for plot excitement.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Language learners at intermediate to advanced Italian level who want to encounter Renaissance drama in the original
Undergraduates and graduate students studying sixteenth-century Italian literature or theater history
Readers interested in della Porta himself and his natural-history background
Researchers who need public-domain Italian texts for corpus analysis

Not a good fit for

General readers with no Italian who hope to read a Chinese translation
Readers who prefer modern fast-paced narrative and lack patience for classical dramatic form
Beginners who want to understand the author’s life and thought through a single book

Reading tips

Read an introduction to della Porta’s life and Renaissance theater background before entering the text.
Read act by act, and after each act summarize the conflict in one sentence to help grasp the overall structure.
Mark archaic or dialect expressions first and check them after finishing the act, avoiding frequent interruptions.
Compare with standard anthologies of contemporary Italian comedy to appreciate the play’s differences in subject and language.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

Is this book a Chinese translation?

No. According to the Project Gutenberg record, the book is in Italian and is an electronic edition of the original text, without Chinese translation. Chinese readers need Italian reading ability or should use it alongside translations and reference works.

What are the features of the Project Gutenberg edition?

Project Gutenberg provides public-domain electronic texts that are free to access, search in full, and cite. This edition was released in 2008 according to its record, with the entry updated in 2019. It is suitable for research reading and textual analysis but contains no modern scholarly annotations or introduction.

Can I read it without any Italian?

Reading the original directly would be very difficult. It is advisable to first build a foundation with a reliable Italian textbook, or use bilingual editions and dictionaries; if you only want to know the content, you can first consult English or Chinese research materials on the play and then decide whether to enter the original.

Is it suitable for use as course material?

It can serve as a supplementary text for courses on Italian literature or drama, especially for discussing the language and themes of Renaissance drama. But the electronic edition lacks annotations and background explanation, so teachers need to supply their own introductions and historical context.

Comments

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About the author

Giambattista della Porta Author · Italian · 1535–1615

Giambattista della Porta (1535?–1615) was an Italian scholar and playwright of the Renaissance, born in Vico Equense and died in Naples. He is best known for his book Natural Magic, and his interests extended to optics, cryptography, and physiognomy, reflecting the intertwining of natural history and experimental inquiry in his age. In drama he wrote some seventeen works, including neoclassical comedies such as L'Olimpia and Gli duoi fratelli rivali, as well as La fantesca, La carbonaria, La sorella, and Lo astrologo. Their subjects are drawn largely from everyday human affairs and domestic entanglements, with lively language and ingenious plots. His plays hold a place in the Italian comic tradition; public information is limited, and many details of his life remain uncertain.