Elena Lombardi

Professor of Italian Literature

The Paget Toynbee Lecturer in Italian Medieval Studies

Fellow of Balliol College

Tutor at St. Peter’s College and Jesus College

 

Academic background

Elena Lombardi received her Laurea from the University of Pavia, with a thesis on the critical edition of Ugo Foscolo’s Lettere dall’Inghilterra, and her Ph.D. from New York University with a dissertation on Dante and the medieval theory of language. Before joining Oxford she was assistant professor in Italian Studies at McGill University (Montréal) and Senior Lecturer in Italian at the University of Bristol.

Research

Her main area of research is Dante and the Middle Ages. Her first book explores the interrelations between the notions of syntax and desire in medieval theology (Augustine), grammar (Modistae) and poetry (Dante). Her second book explores concepts of love and desire in the Middle Ages with focus on the episode of Francesca in Inferno 5. She has also published on early Italian poetry (the Sicilian School. Guido Cavalcanti, Petrarca). Other areas of interest are idea of the book in the Middle Ages, and the theme of intertextuality in the Renaissance epic-chivalric poem.

Teaching

Italian medieval Literature, especially Dante, early Italian poetry, Petrarca.

Publications

Monographs

Ulysses, Dante and Other Stories. Berlin: ICI Berlin Press, 2023

Beatrice e le altre. Dante e le figure femminili. Rome: Società Dantesca Italiana-Gruppo editoriale GEDI-la Repubblica, 2021

Imagining  the Woman Reader in the Age of Dante. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018

 

The Wings of the Doves. Love and Desire in Dante and Medieval Culture. Montreal: McGill Queens University Press, 2012

The Syntax of Desire. Language and Love in Augustine, the Modistae, Dante. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007.

Co-edited books

The Oxford Handbook of Dante, E. Lombardi, M. Gragnolati and F. Southerden eds. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021.

Dantean Dialogues. Engaging with the Legacy of Amilcare Iannucci, E. Lombardi and M. Kilgour eds. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, forthcoming

Desire in Dante and the Middle Ages. E. Lombardi, M. Gragnolati, F. Southerden and T. Kay eds. Oxford: Legenda, 2012

Articles and Chapters in Books

‘Beatrice “comica” ’, Paragone 72 (2021): 17-40.

‘Dante Unbound: A Vulnerable Life and the Openness of Interpretation’, with Manuele Gragnolati and Francesca Southerden. Introduction to The Oxford Handbook of Dante, E. Lombardi, M. Gragnolati and F. Southerden eds. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), pp. xxi-xxxiii.

‘Poetry’, in The Oxford Handbook of Dante, E. Lombardi, M. Gragnolati and F. Southerden eds. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), pp. 319-33.

‘Volgarizzazione lirica e piacere linguistico in Dante’, with Manuele Gragnolati in Per una storia sociale del tradurre medievale, S. Bischetti, M. Lodone, C. Lorenzi, A. Montefusco eds (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2020), pp. 281-96.

‘Purgatorio 1 e 2: Catone, Marzia e la sfida alla lettura figurale’, Chroniques Italiennes 39 (2020): 225-41.

‘Autobiografia d’autore’ with Manuele Gragnolati, Dante Studies 136 (2018): 143-60.

‘Lust and Law in Inferno V, with Nicolò Crisafi, in Ethics, Politics and Justice in Dante, G. Gaimari and K. Keen eds. (London: UCL Press, 2018), 63-79.

‘Il pensiero linguistico di Dante nella Vita Nova’, in Vita nova. Fiore. Epistola XIII, ed by P. Allegretti, A. Casadei, M. Gragnolati, L.C. Rossi, N. Tonelli (Florence: SISMEL, 2018 Le Opere di Dante 1), 45-64.

‘Donne che leggono (e sono lette): Francesca, Fiammetta e la vedova del Corbaccio (e la Sirena)’, in Aimer ou ne pas aimer: une question, deux textes. Boccace, Elegia di madonna Fiammetta et Corbaccio, P. Guerin ed. (Paris: Presses Sorbonne Nuovelle, 2018), 93-106

‘Identità lirica e piacere linguistico: una lettura di Paradiso xxvi’, Studi danteschi 82 (2018): 51-80.

‘The Poetics of Transgression. Inferno 26, Purgatorio 26, Paradiso 26’, in Vertical Readings in Dante’s Comedy, G. Corbett and H. Webb eds. (Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2017), pp. 71-88.

‘Lucan’s Wood in Ariosto and Tasso’ in Cultural Reception, Translation and Transformation from Medieval to Modern Italy, B. Richardson ed. (Oxford: Legenda, 2017), 84-96.

‘Lettori e lettura in Dante’, in C’è un lettore in questo testo? Rappresentazioni letterarie della lettura in Italia, G. Rizzarelli and C. Savettieri eds. (Bologna: il Mulino, 2016), 23-41.

‘ “Per aver pace coi seguaci sui” civil, religious and erotic peace in Inferno 5’, in War and Peace in Dante, J. Barnes and D. O’Connel eds. (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2015), 173-193.

‘ “A Gallehault Was the Book”: Francesca da Rimini and the Manesse Minnesanger Manuscript’, Mediaevalia 35 (2015): 151-76.

‘Francesca lettrice di romanzi e il “punto” di Inferno v’, L’Alighieri 43 (June 2014): 19-39.

‘ “Che libido fe’ licito in sua legge”. Lust and Law, Reason and Passion in Dante’, in Dantean Dialogues. Engaging with the Legacy of Amilcare Iannucci, M. Kilgour and E. Lombardi eds. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013), 125-54.

*‘Dante and Augustine’, in Reviewing Dante’s Theology, C. Honess and M. Treherne eds. (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2013), vol. 1, 175-208.

‘Transforming Desire’, in Desire in Dante and the Middle Ages, ed. by M. Gragnolati, T. Kay, E. Lombardi, and F. Southerden (Oxford: Legenda, 2012), pp. 1-11 (editors’ introduction, written with Gragnolati, Kay and Southerden).

‘Plurilingualism sub specie aeternitatis. Language/s in Dante’s Commedia’, in Dante’s Plurilingualism. Authority, Vulgarization, Subjectivity, S. Fortuna, M. Gragnolati, and J. Trabant eds. (Oxford: Legenda, 2010), 133-147.

‘I desire therefore I am. Petrarch’s Canzoniere between the medieval and modern notion of desire’, in Early Modern Medievalism. The Interplay between Scholarly Reflection and Artistic Production, A. Montoya, S. van Romburgh, W. van Anrooij eds. (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 19-43.

‘Of Bikes and Men. The Crossing of three Narratives in Vittorio De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves’, Studies in European Cinema 6 (2009): 113-26.

‘Scar narrative – sore narrative. The liquidation of realism in D’Annunzio’s Giovanni Episcopo and l’Innocente’, Quaderni di Italianistica 27 (2006): 107-38.

‘Traduzione e riscrittura: da Folchetto al Notaio’, The Italianist 24 (2004): 5-19.

‘The Grammar of Vision in Guido Cavalcanti’, in Guido Cavalcanti tra i suoi lettori, M.L. Ardizzone ed. (Florence: Cadmo, 2003), 83-92.

‘Per l’edizione critica delle Lettere scritte dall'Inghilterra’, Studi di Filologia Italiana, 53 (1995), 249-344.

Lettere scritte dall'Inghilterra in Ugo Foscolo, Opere, II (Torino: Einuadi-Gallimard, 1995), 447-502.