Italian literature grew before a unified Italian state, through competing vernaculars, Latin learning, courts, communes, republics, print centers, theatre, song, science, and regional traditions. This shelf begins with Dante's complete Comedy, Boccaccio's complete Decameron, and Ariosto's complete Orlando Furioso in historical English translations. Those works form a magnificent opening triad; they do not exhaust Italian writing or the languages of Italy.

Begin with the Introduction to Italian-Language Literature, choose a route through the Reader's Guide, and keep the Italian-Language Literature Glossary nearby. The guide records absent women, regional and dialect literatures, theatre, opera, science, the nineteenth-century nation, modernism, colonial and postcolonial writing, migration, and diaspora as acquisition obligations rather than footnotes.