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IAS Book Launch: A History of Poetry in Italy, 1200–1600
18 March 2026, 5:30 pm–7:30 pm
In conjunction with the Centre for Early Modern Exchanges, the IAS is delighted to welcome Catherine Keen, Guyda Armstrong and Rhiannon Daniels to launch their new book.
Event Information
Open to
- All
Availability
- Yes
Organiser
-
Institute of Advanced Studies
Location
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IAS Common GroundG11, ground floor, South WingUCL, Gower St, LondonWC1E 6BT
About the book
A History of Poetry in Italy, 1200–1600
Cambridge University Press, 2025
This new history of poetry in Italy introduces the variety and liveliness of poetic activity on the Italian peninsula over four centuries, from early manuscript experiments in verse in the Middle Ages through to the sophisticated print productions and elaborate performance media of the Early Modern. The volume’s sixteen chapters gather expert contributions from international scholars, investigating the poetry worlds of the pre-modern Italian peninsula in all the diversity of their cultural and geographical contexts and their material media of transmission. Topics range from the medieval Sicilian invention of the sonnet form through to early modern epics both serious and satirical, and from poetry recorded in graffiti, marginalia, or sketch-book scribbles to the classification and cataloguing of an emerging poetic canon in the age of print. Widening the perspective offered by the traditional canon, it reveals the poetry of Italy between 1200 and 1600 as a site of creative plurality in genre, form and even language.
ABOUT THE EVENT
The volume will be introduced by Lisa Sampson, Co-Director of the Centre for Early Modern Studies, before a presentation led by Daragh O’Connell, Senior Lecturer in Italian Studies at University College Cork (Ireland), in conversation with the three co-editors. The official part will end with a Q&A and a reception will follow.
All welcome but please register to attend: https://eme-italian-poetry.eventbrite.co.uk
View information on accessibility in the South Wing.
This event has been organised by the UCL Centre for Early Modern Exchanges. The Centre is dedicated to the study of the diverse cultural, economic and social exchanges between early modern states in the Old World and beyond in the period 1450-1800. Our work focuses on how complex intercultural interactions from translation to trade began to create borders and frontiers between countries, vernacular literatures and identities in this period.
Image: Cropped section of A Muse (Calliope?) by Cosimo Tura, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
About the Speakers
Catherine Keen
Professor of Dante Studies at UCL SELCS-CMII
My research focuses on medieval Italian literature, and on the relationships between poetic and political cultures in the period 1200 to 1400. Concentrating especially on Dante, I am also interested in lyric and narrative poetry from the medieval peninsula written in Italian, Occitan, and Latin, and in its transmission history.
More about Catherine KeenGuyda Armstrong
Professor of Italian at School of Arts, Languages and Cultures, University of Manchester
I am the Director of the John Rylands Research Institute and Library at the University of Manchester, and a book historian and early modern literary scholar, who works at the intersection of languages, information design, and the digital.
More about Guyda ArmstrongRhiannon Daniels
Associate Professor in Italian at School of Modern Languages, University of Bristol
My research spans medieval and Renaissance Italian literary culture, with a particular focus on the reception of Giovanni Boccaccio, materiality and the production contexts of manuscripts and early print. I co-founded and co-direct Bristol Common Press, a working historic print shop, as a research and teaching laboratory for early modern print cultures.
More about Rhiannon DanielsDaragh O'Connell
Senior Lecturer in Italian at School of Languages, Literatures and Cultures, University College Cork
I research across three distinct areas: Dante Studies; modern and contemporary Sicilian Literature; and eighteenth-century Neapolitan autobiography (Vico). My main field of interest is Dante, in relation especially to thirteenth and fourteenth-century court culture, and I am Director of the Centre for Dante Studies in Ireland.
More about Daragh O'Connell