This edited volume contains the articles, which were presented at the 1998 Düsseldorf conference on Italian literature in German. The book contains four sections, called ‘Lyrics and Verse Epics’, ‘Theatre’, ‘Novels and Stories’ and ‘Essays’. Twenty-two literary critics, translators and literary scholars set out to investigate which significant Italian works have been made accessible to a German-speaking audience, from the Middle Ages to the present day. Also, they trace which are present on the book markets and which ones should be (re)translated into German.