Piero Boitani


Piero Boitani is an Italian literary critic.

Life

Born in Rome, Boitani received his Ph.D. from Cambridge while teaching there and has taught in the University of Pescara and University of Perugia. He is Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature at the Sapienza University of Rome and has taught at the Gregorian University and at the University of Italian Switzerland.
He was the President of the European Society for English Studies from 1989 to 1995, as well as becoming a Fellow of the British Academy, the Accademia dei Lincei, the Academia Europaea, the Polish Academy of Arts, the Accademia delle Scienze di Torino, the Accademia dell’Arcadia, the Medieval Academy of America, and the Dante Society of America. In 2002 he received from the Accademia dei Lincei the Feltrinelli Prize for literary criticism, in 2010 the De Sanctis Prize, and in 2016 the Balzan Prize for Comparative Literature. He is the literary editor of the Greek and Latin classics series, Fondazione Valla.

Selected works

Boitani has published, among others, the following volumes:
  • Prosatori Negri Americani del Novecento
  • Chaucer and Boccaccio
  • English Medieval Narrative of the 13th and 14th centuries
  • Chaucer and the Imaginary World of Fame
  • The Tragic and the Sublime in Medieval Literature
  • La letteratura del Medioevo inglese
  • The Shadow of Ulysses. Figures of a Myth
  • Sulle orme di Ulisse
  • The Bible and its Rewritings
  • The Genius to Improve an Invention
  • Winged Words. Flight in Poetry and History
  • Esodi e Odissee
  • Dante's Poetry of the Donati
  • La prima lezione sulla letteratura
  • Letteratura europea e Medioevo volgare
  • Il grande racconto delle stelle
  • Dante e il suo futuro
  • Timaeus in Paradise: Metaphors and Beauty from Plato to Dante and Beyond
He also edited and contributed to a number of other works, including:
  • Chaucer and the Italian Trecento
  • The Cambridge Chaucer Companion, with J. Mann
  • The European Tragedy of Troilus
  • Lo spazio letterario del Medioevo volgare
He has edited and translated into Italian works including: