Ten Timeless Lessons on the Classics

Boitani’s presentation of the classics is as entertaining and unexpected as it is informative. He invites the reader to discover the timeless beauty and wisdom of ancient literature, highlighting its profound and surprising connections to the present.

With their emphasis on the mutability and fluidity of identity and matter, their examination of the power andposition of women in society, and their enduring treatments of force and subjugation, fate and free will, the ethical life, hospitality, love, compassion, and mysticism, the classics play active roles in our lives and can help us refine our opinions and our values.

Ranging from Homer to Tacitus, with Thucydides, Aristotle Sophocles, Cicero, and many others in between, Boitani’s A New Sublime is a fresh, inspiring reminder of the enduring importance and beauty of the classics of the Western canon.

“A New Sublime is as bewitching and entertaining as a novel. [ . . . ] Boitani uncovers the unexpected, extraordinary modernity of the classics.” —Piero Dorfles, Per un pugno di libri

Piero Boitani
Piero Boitani is one of Italy’s most renowned philologists and literary critics. An expert on ancient myths, medievalist, and a Dante scholar, he is currently Professor of Comparative Literature at the Sapienza University in Rome.