PREFACE THIS Edition of the Vita Nuova has been prepared with the sole purpose of helping those students who wish to read the work in the Italian original, as written by Dante. It does not claim to supersede either Sir Theodore Martin's scholarly and learned translation, or the poetical and free version of D. G. Rossetti. It is a practical invitation to English students of Dante to read his works in Italian, the only way now left open to them of becoming acquainted with Dante's genius and ideas. More than seven thousand books on Dante have increased to such a point the difficulties of studying his works that to the bewildered student, mercilessly tossed on the stormy waters of contradictory commentaries and of subjective criticism, nothing is left but to take shelter in the safe haven offered by the Italian original-that is to say, if he wishes to know what Dante thought and |