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Translating Dante's Vita nuova: the first English edition, Florence 1846
08 March 2023, 5:00 pm–7:00 pm
A discussion exploring the first translation into English of Dante Alighieri’s ‘book of memory’, the Vita nuova.
Event Information
Open to
- UCL staff | UCL students
Organiser
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Professor Catherine Keen
Location
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IAS ForumG17, Ground Floor, South WingUCL, Gower Street, LondonWC1E 6BTUnited Kingdom
Dr Federica Coluzzi (Warwick University), Professor Gigliola Sacerdoti Mariani (Florence University) and Dr Alessandro Scafi (Warburg Institute) will lead a conversation exploring the landmark first edition of an English translation of Dante Alighieri’s Vita nuova. Joseph Garrow’s The Early Life of Dante Alighieri, Together with the Original in Parallel Pages, was published in 1846 by Le Monnier, a product of the Dantean enthusiasms of Victorian Anglo-Florentine literary circles. Our speakers will discuss the nineteenth-century afterlife of the Vita nuova, and its reception among English and Italian readers, editors, and illustrators. Rare copies of the work from the UCL and London Library collections, each with important Risorgimento cultural provenance, will be on display alongside Prof. Sacerdoti Mariani’s 2021 new edition of the 1846 original.
Andrea del Cornò (London Library) and Tabitha Tuckett (UCL Special Collections) will present the two copies of the 1846 edition. Discussion will be chaired by Catherine Keen (UCL Italian Studies).
About the Speakers
Gigliola Sacerdoti Mariani
Professor of English Language and Linguistics at University of Florence
Gigliola Sacerdoti Mariani is Professor of English Language and Linguistics at the University of Florence. She has published extensively on English and American literature from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries. Her new edition of The Early Life of Dante Alighieri was published in the Intersezioni series for Effigi Edizioni, for the Dante Septcentenary of 2021.
Dr Federica Coluzzi
Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow in the Department of Italian at Warwick University
Federica Coluzzi is a Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow in the Department of Italian at Warwick. A specialist in literary reception and the history of publishing and reading, she has recently co-edited, with Jacob Blakesley, a volume of essays on The Afterlife of Dante’s ‘Vita Nova’ in the Anglophone World (Routledge Translation Studies series, 2022).
Dr Alessandro Scafi
Senior Lecturer in Medieval and Renaissance Cultural History at Warburg Institute, University of London
Alessandro Scafi is Senior Lecturer in Medieval and Renaissance Cultural History at the Warburg Institute, University of London. His publications on the history of cartography and the history of pilgrimage include extensive discussion of Dante. Since 2011 he has coordinated a successful annual series of Dante readings aimed at the general public, together with Prof. John Took and Dr Tabitha Tuckett of UCL.
Catherine Keen
Professor of Dante Studies at University College London
Catherine Keen is Professor of Dante Studies at University College London. Her publications on Dante and medieval literature include several articles on Dante’s Vita nova.
Andrea del Cornò
Italian Specialist at London Library
Andrea del Cornò (MA) is Italian Specialist at the London Library, where he has been in post since 2002, and Subject Librarian (Italian Literature & Language) at the Taylor Institution Library, University of Oxford.
Dr Tabitha Tuckett
Rare Books Librarian at Special Collections, University College London Library
Tabitha Tuckett is the Rare Books Librarian in the Special Collections of University College London Library. In this capacity, she works closely with UCL Library’s Dante Collection (with circa 3000 volumes on Dante), and collaborates with John Took and Alessandro Scafi on their Dante readings series.