Legas is a multilingual publishing company devoted to the dissemination of original works, and specializing in the areas of culture, the language arts and social sciences. Formed in 1987 by its founder, Dr. Leonard G. Sbrocchi, Legas continues today to publish high-quality publications of special interest in several languages for markets worldwide.
Dr. Sbrocchi is by no means a stranger to the literary field; he is a professor of Modern Languages and literatures at the University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. He has published numerous essays and monographs in Italian Literature (Pavese, Fucini, Pirandello, Carducci, Pascoli, Vassalli, Risi); has co-translated into English The comedies of Ariosto, Aretino's Marescalco, Pirandello's Tonight We Improvise, Siciliano's Caravaggio's Death and Other Stories, Maraini's Veronica Franco Courtesan and Poet, and other works.
He is co-editor of the series Language, Media & Education Studies, Studies in Drama and Theatre, and Italian Theatre in Translation, and has edited numerous other works in various fields. He is presently working on an edition of Galiani's Il Socrate immaginario (The Imaginary Socrates) and is exploring the relationships between the Commedia dell'Arte and the Opera Buffa. Dr. Sbrocchi heads up Legas Publishing in Ottawa, Canada.
Our New York counterpart, Gaetano Cipolla, is also a professor of Italian and Chairman of the Department of Modern Foreign Languages at St. John's University. He has written numerous scholarly articles on Dante, Petrarch, Tasso, Pirandello, Calvino and others. Some of his essays appear in Labyrinth: Studies on an Archetype. He is also the author of a number of very successful booklets such as What Italy Has Given to the World and What Makes a Sicilian? He is President of Arba Sicula, an international organization that promotes the language and culture of Sicily and he is the Editor of Arba Sicula and Sicilia Parra.
He is the general editor of three series of books for Legas Publishing: "Pueti d'Arba Sicula/Poets of Arba Sicula," which has already published five volumes, "Sicilian Studies," with six volumes, and "Italian Poetry in Translation" with seven volumes.
Prof. Cipolla has translated several authors from the Sicilian: Giovanni Meli's The Origins of the World, Don Chisciotti and Sanciu Panza, and Moral Fables and Other Poems; Vincenzo Ancona's Malidittu la lingua /Damned Language; The Poetry of Nino Martoglio; Antonino Provenzano's Vinissi/I'd Love to Come. He has also translated Giuseppe Fava's play Violenza into English, (2001) and History of Autonomous Sicily (Legas 2001) by Romolo Menighetti and Franco Nicastro.