Seminar: Albert Russell Ascoli

“Critica nova, or Everything Old is New Again: A Conversation, with Examples, on the Renewal of Dante Studies”

A Public Workshop and Seminar in connection with Zygmunt Baranski’s Graduate Course, “Dante’s World of Books”

Albert Russell Ascoli (University of California, Berkeley)

The overall focus of the workshop will be the current state of Dante Studies. Professor Ascoli will speak specifically about his own attempts in that direction, both in the recent past and currently, in dialogue with those of others, including Zygmunt Baranski, Theodore Cachey, Christian Moevs, and Vittorio Montemaggi, and one or two other scholars not currently teaching at Notre Dame. He will conclude by presenting an example of a current interpretive problem that he is puzzling over, highlighting its methodological implications for the study of the Commedia.

Albert Russell Ascoli is Terrill Distinguished Professor and Department Chair of Italian Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, a founding member of the Designated Emphasis in Renaissance and Early Modern Studies, and vice-president of the Dante Society of America. He is the author of Ariosto’s Bitter Harmony, Dante and the Making of a Modern Author , and A Local Habitation and a Name: Imagining Histories in the Italian Renaissance. He is co-editor of essay collections on Machiavelli and Literature, the discourse of “Risorgimento” in 19th- and 20th-century Italy, and “Italy in the Drama of Europe,” as well as of volume two of the electronic journal, California Italian Studies, entitled “Italian Futures.” He is currently editing the Cambridge Companion to Petrarch.

(A reading list for the workshop may be found on the Italian Studies event page; please contact aleone@nd.edu for access to these materials via e-reserves.)