Our Ancestors

	Our Ancestors ''Our Ancestors'' (Italian: ''I Nostri Antenati'') is the name of Italo Calvino's "heraldic trilogy" that comprises ''The Cloven Viscount'' (1952), ''The Baron in the Trees'' (1957), and ''The Nonexistent Knight ''The Nonexistent Knight'' (Italian: ''Il cavaliere inesistente'') is an allegorical fantasy novel by Italian writer Italo Calvino, first published in Italian in 1959 and in English translation in 1962. The tale explores questions of identity, in ...'' (1959). Novel series {{1950s-hist-novel-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu]
	Italo Calvino Italo Calvino (, also , ;. RAI (circa 1970), retrieved 25 October 2012. 15 October 1923 – 19 September 1985) was an Italian writer and journalist. His best known works include the ''Our Ancestors'' trilogy (1952–1959), the '' Cosmicomics'' collection of short stories (1965), and the novels ''Invisible Cities'' (1972) and ''If on a winter's night a traveler'' (1979). Admired in Britain, Australia and the United States, he was the most translated contemporary Italian writer at the time of his death. Italo Calvino is buried in the garden cemetery of Castiglione della Pescaia, in Tuscany. Biography Parents Italo Calvino was born in Santiago de las Vegas, a suburb of Havana, Cuba, in 1923. His father, Mario, was a tropical agronomist and botanist who also taught agriculture and floriculture. Born 47 years earlier in Sanremo, Italy, Mario Calvino had emigrated to Mexico in 1909 where he took up an important position with the Ministry of Agriculture. In an autobiographical ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu]
	The Cloven Viscount ''The Cloven Viscount'' ( it, Il visconte dimezzato) is a fantasy novel by Italian writer Italo Calvino. It was first published by Einaudi (Turin) in 1952 and in English in 1962 by William Collins, with a translation by Archibald Colquhoun. ''The Cloven Viscount'' was collected together with ''The Baron in the Trees'' and ''The Nonexistent Knight'' in a single volume, ''Our Ancestors'', for which Calvino was awarded the Salento Prize in 1960. Plot The Viscount Medardo of Terralba and his squire Kurt ride across the plague-ravaged plain of Bohemia en route to join the Christian army in the Turkish wars of the seventeenth century. On the first day of fighting, a Turkish swordsman unhorses the inexperienced Viscount. Fearless, he scrambles over the battlefield with sword bared, and is split in two by a cannonball hitting him square in the chest. As a result of the injury, Viscount Medardo becomes two people: Gramo (the Bad) and Buono (the Good). The army field doctors save Gramo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu]
	The Baron In The Trees ''The Baron in the Trees'' ( it, Il barone rampante) is a 1957 novel by Italian writer Italo Calvino. Described as a ''conte philosophique'' and a metaphor for independence, it tells the adventures of a boy who climbs up a tree to spend the rest of his life inhabiting an arboreal kingdom. Calvino published a new version of the novel in 1959. Plot Set in an imaginary village on the Ligurian Riviera, Ombrosa represents the author's vision as a central theme, little inclined to judgments and dull opinions. The novel is narrated by Biagio, the younger brother of the protagonist, and is the story of a young baron, Cosimo Piovasco di Rondò, firstborn of a noble family sadly behind the times. The main story begins with a dispute on June 15, 1767 in the villa of Ombrosa, between an adolescent Cosimo and his father, after which Cosimo, who had quarreled with his father because he had refused to eat a snail soup, climbs the trees of the home garden and promises never to come down agai ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu]
	The Nonexistent Knight ''The Nonexistent Knight'' (Italian: ''Il cavaliere inesistente'') is an allegorical fantasy novel by Italian writer Italo Calvino, first published in Italian in 1959 and in English translation in 1962. The tale explores questions of identity, integration with society, and virtue through the adventures of Agilulf, a medieval knight who exemplifies chivalry, piety, and faithfulness but exists only as an empty suit of armour. Plot The protagonists of this novel are two paladins of Charlemagne: the titular non-existent knight, named Agilulf (he is in fact a lucid empty suit of armor), and an inexperienced and passionate young man, Rambaldo. The latter, having arrived at the camp of paladins at the beginning of the novel, wants to avenge his father's death, caused by the Argalif Isoarre; Agilulf instead fights for duty, convinced of his faith, with a value that is admired by all the paladins, but also with a remarkable sense of duty, of precision in controlling the progress of the dut ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu]