With extensive notes and commentary prepared especially for this edition. "The English Dante of choice."--Hugh Kenner. "Exactly what we have waited for these years, a Dante with clarity, eloquence, terror, and profoundly moving depths.

Unedited version in poetry form.

Set in Lombardy during the Spanish occupation of the late 1620s, The Betrothed tells the story of two young lovers, Renzo and Lucia, prevented from marrying by the petty tyrant Don Rodrigo, who desires Lucia for himself.

Mazzotta calls for a new approach: the necessity to study the Renaissance in terms of the ongoing conversation of the arts and sciences."--BOOK JACKET.