Dante Society Newsletter Volume 15, Number 2 April 2009

are wrapped in pedantic air, remote from Dante Prize, Grandgent Award our common reality. Happily, we know that, thanks to the efforts of generations of As submissions to the current round of scholars and teachers, this has happened. competitions begin to arrive, it is time If anything, we have recently been led by again to urge members to encourage

the belief that Dante's appeal to promising dantisti to compete. Sub-

philosophers, theologians, ethicists, missions must be sent as e-mail historians, and so forth, foreshadows the attachments to [email protected] no necessary diffusion of the Divine Comedy later than June 30. For eligibility, size across cultural boundaries all over the limits, and complete guidelines, please world. visit www.dantesociety.org/prizes.html. No one can take credit for this newly emerging reality in Dante scholarship, but I am delighted to be able to mention some Spring Election

signs of the novelties. For instance, a "Casa di Dante in Latinoamérica" was Enclosed you will find a ballot of candidates prepared by the Nominating founded in Salta, Argentina, with a 2005 Committee according to our bylaws. gift of library materials from the DSA and Please mark your ballot and seal it in the A Letter from the President from sustaining life member Robert Frank provided "Ballot Envelope." Also Pence. The Fourth Interdisciplinary Con- enclosed is a proxy for the Annual Dear Friends, ference of the Nordic Dante Network will Meeting. Please return it, together with be held in Finland on August 20-22, 2009. My second term as President of the the ballot envelope, so that it arrives no Almost a year later, on August 15-20, DSA is about to expire, which means that later than Wednesday, May 13th. 2010, a conference on "Dante in East the Council installed at the Annual The Nominating Committee (Daniela Asia" will be held in Seoul, South Korea, Meeting on May 16th will, in the weeks Boccassini, Arielle Saiber [Chair], and on which occasion Dante's poetry and that follow, elect from its own number my Jan Ziolkowski) has placed on this vision will be re-thought from new successor. You certainly all know that it Spring's ballot the following five perspectives. has been a privilege for me to serve this nominees: Without a doubt, this is an exciting time historic literary Society, and, like you, I look forward to the up-and-coming for Dante studies. I hasten to add my Albert Russell Ascoli (Ph.D., Cornell) changing of the guard. As was the case in belief that the DSA, more than any other has taught at Northwestern University and, the symbolic rituals and ceremonies of Dante association anywhere, has a key since 1996, at the University of California at succession in the Middle Ages, term role to play in the interpretive debates that Berkeley, where he is Terrill Distinguished limits represent the privileged time of lie ahead. Yet to be able to turn into a Professor of Italian Studies. He is the author transition and renewal, and thus they veritable beacon for Dante readers all over of Ariosto's Bitter Harmony (Princeton, provide the opportunity to look back to the world, the DSA may need to envision 1987), Dante and the Making of a Modern the past and ahead to the future. some radical steps. We are fortunate and Author (Cambridge, 2008), and 'A Local It is clear to all of us that Dante proud – let me say this clearly – to have Habitation and a Name': Essays in the continues to be widely regarded as been able to forge an indissoluble bond Historicity and Historiography of Italian probably the greatest poet of the Western with the Longfellow House. But our Renaissance Literature (forthcoming, tradition and as one who has given a form inveterate American optimism also lets us Fordham). He co-edited with Victoria Kahn Machiavelli and the Discourse of Literature or an imaginative constitution to the dream a difficult and yet feasible dream, (Cornell, 1993); with Krystyna Von devastations of the "human" and to the namely that of beginning to think of establishing a Dante House at some time Henneberg Making and Remaking Italy: The longings of the mind and heart. Cultivation of National Identity around the He has built a poetic dwelling-place in the future. A fund-raiser, therefore, ought to be launched with this distant and Risorgimento (Berg 2001); and Italy in the which we, like our forebears and Drama of Europe, a special issue of yet concrete objective in mind. I hope the posterity, will inhabit. But calling this Renaissance Drama, with Will West. He has Florentine poet "Western" – beyond the future membership will realize this dream. fact of the accuracy of the definition – In closing, I want to thank all of our members for their support. Allow me also entails an act of demarcation, a sort of ANNUAL MEETING boundary, which is at odds with the poet's to thank by name three great-hearted Saturday, May 16, 11:00 a.m., universality. Thus many of us in our work colleagues who have done a superb job for the DSA: Richard Lansing, Todd Boli, Carriage House, Longfellow Historic Site, and vocation have been guided by the 105 Brattle Street, Cambridge, MA. and Vincent Pollina. It was an honor to conviction that Dante ought to be read The Longfellow House is a short walk from outside the traditional departments of have had you by my side. Harvard Square. Parking at the site is limited, Italian and that we should dispel the Giuseppe Mazzotta but garages are available in Harvard Square. impression that his language and thought received numerous fellowships and awards, number of articles on medieval poetry. His most recently the Rome Prize of the Melodic and Poetic Design in Troubadour American Academy in Rome. Lyric is currently in preparation. A recipient Council Members, 2008-09 of grants from the Whiting Foundation, the Teodolinda Barolini, ex officio Jason Houston (Ph.D., Yale) is Assistant American Philosophical Society, and the Susanna Barsella Professor of Italian and Director of the National Endowment for the Humanities, he Daniela Boccassini Italian Program at the University of has served on the Executive Board of the Todd Boli, Vice President Oklahoma. He is the author of Building a Association Internationale d'Études William Franke Monument to Dante: Boccaccio as Dantista, Occitanes, and is current President of the Giuseppe Mazzotta, President (forthcoming, Toronto), and has published Société Guilhem IX (the North American Vincent Pollina, Secretary-Treasurer articles on the early manuscript tradition of society for Occitan studies). He has agreed Arielle Saiber Boccaccio's Decameron and on Boccaccio's to present his candidacy for a second term as Nancy Vickers and Petrarca's epistolary debate over Dante Secretary-Treasurer of the DSA. (MLN, forthcoming). He is currently Board of Editors revising an article on Boccaccio's editio of Justin Steinberg (Ph.D., Minnesota) is Teodolinda Barolini, ex officio the Vita Nova, and is editing and co- Associate Professor at the University of Theodore Cachey translating Shorter Latin Works of Giovanni Chicago. He is a scholar of medieval Italian Alison Cornish Boccaccio for the I Tatti Renaissance literature, with research interests in the early Olivia Holmes Library, for which he has received support lyric, literary historiography, manuscript Joseph Luzzi from the NEH. He is a member of the World culture, and the intersection of literature and Richard Lansing, Editor of Dante Web site advisory board, and is a law. His first book, Accounting for Dante: Giuseppe Mazzotta, ex officio book review editor for The Medieval Urban Readers and Writers in Late Heather Webb Review. Medieval Italy (Notre Dame 2007), won the Winthrop Wetherbee MLA Scaglione Prize for best manuscript in Victoria Kirkham, who took her Ph.D. at Italian Studies. He has also published Nominating Committee, 2008-09 Johns Hopkins under Charles S. Singleton, articles on the Compiuta donzella, on Daniela Boccassini is Professor of Romance Languages at the Dante's dreams, and on Petrarch's Arielle Saiber, Chair University of Pennsylvania. She has uncollected poems. His current book Jan Ziolkowski received fellowships from Harvard's I Tatti, project, for which he was recently awarded a the Newberry Library, the NEH, and the grant from the ACLS, is entitled "Law and Prize Committee, 2008-09 Fulbright and the Guggenheim Foundations. Justice in Dante's Commedia." Susanna Barsella, Chair One of several books that she has authored William Franke on Boccaccio – Fabulous Vernacular: The Annual Meeting Boccaccio's Filocolo and the Art of Auditing Committee, 2008-09

Medieval Fiction (Michigan, 2001) – won Todd Boli the MLA Scaglione Prize for best The Annual Meeting of the Society will Laurie Shepard, Chair manuscript in Italian Studies. Her volume take place on Saturday, May 16, 2009, in Laura Battiferra and Her Literary Circle: the Carriage House of the Longfellow An Anthology (Chicago, 2006) defines that National Historic Site (105 Brattle Street, poet in the tradition from Dante and Cambridge, MA 02138). This year's event Petrarch; for the same press she is co-editor will begin at 11 a.m., so as to enable out- of Petrarch: A Critical Guide to the of-town members to travel more easily on Complete Works (forthcoming). Her essays the day itself. on Dante have appeared in American and Italian journals; she is currently gathering After the business meeting, President them together, along with new material on Mazzotta will chair a panel on Future the poet's reception history. Directions in Dante Studies. The participants are Heather Webb, Ohio State Vincent Pollina (Ph.D., Yale) is University ("Dante in His World [And in Associate Professor and Deputy Chair, Ours]"); Filippo Naitana, Fairfield Department of Romance Languages, Tufts University ("Dante's Philology of the University, where he teaches a two-semester Future"); Susanna Barsella, Fordham course on the Divine Comedy. He is the University ("Angelology as the Key to author of Si cum Marcabrus declina: Studies Dante's Poetics"); Justin Steinberg, in the Poetics of the Troubadour Marcabru University of Chicago ("Dante and the (published in the series directed by Aurelio Roncaglia, University of Rome) and of a Law").

Refreshments will be served at the DANTE SOCIETY NEWSLETTER conclusion of the program. BALLOTS AND PROXIES Published twice each year by

must reach P.O. Box 1558, the Dante Society of America and ______distributed to members of the Society. Arlington, MA 02474-0023, no later than Wednesday, May 13. P.O. Box 1558 Arlington, MA 02474-0023 Results will be announced on May 16 at the Annual Meeting. www.dantesociety.org