Laura Banella is Assistant Professor of Italian at the University of Notre Dame, US. She was Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow for the project LyrA-Lyric Authority: Editing and Rewriting Dante’s Lyric Poetry (14th–16th c.), and research fellow at Wolfson College. She studied at the University of Pisa and at the Scuola Normale Superiore. She earned a PhD in Romance Studies from Duke University (2018) and a Doctorate in Italian Literature from the University of Padova (2014).
Main research lines
Medieval Italian literature, with a particular focus on material philology; lyric and epic poetry; Renaissance literature and artistic literature; the female auctor. In particular, my research has focused on Dante and Boccaccio and on the books transmitting their works (13th-16th c.). I have also worked on reception and on the history of literary criticism.
The project LyrA - Lyric Authority: Editing and Rewriting Dante’s Lyric Poetry (14th – 16th c.) explored the physical act of copying, editing, and printing Dante’s lyric poetry from the 14th to the early 16th century in Italy through the study of multi-text and multi-author volumes, both manuscripts and early printed editions. In the history of circulation and reception of Dante’s poems, a field in itself of significant scholarly debate, the crucial function of editors and anthologists has been neglected. LyrA addressed this omission, expanding our knowledge of the cultural heritage bequeathed by Dante and in his name. Through this privileged case-study of Dante’s reception and ‘canonization’, LyrA explored the specific kinds of authority and the conditions for canon-creation at the passage from the Middle Ages to Modernity. It investigated the ways in which ‘national poets’ are born through editing and rewriting, and how major authors influence cultural development.
Dante’s Lyric Poetry in Oxford. A Digital Exhibition.
Selected Publications
Research monographs
Rime e libri delle rime di Dante tra Medioevo e primo Rinascimento. Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 2020
La ‘Vita nuova’ del Boccaccio. Fortuna e tradizione, Roma-Padova: Antenore, 2017
Co-Edited volumes
Oltre la ‘Commedia’. ‘L’altro Dante’ e il canone antico della lirica (1450-1600), eds. Laura Banella and Franco Tomasi. Rome: Carocci, 2020.
Critical editions
Sicco Polenton, Vite dei moderni. Dante, Mussato, Petrarca, Boccaccio, ed., trans. and comm. by Laura Banella and Rino Modonutti. Padua: CLEUP, 2020.
Selected Articles and Essays
“Fiammetta and Héloïse: Boccaccio’s Female Auctor and Women Intellectuals,” Mediaevalia 42 (2021): 227-267.
“The Lyric Dante in the Twentieth Century: Hermeneutics and Editorial Forms.” Italian Studies 75/3 (2020): 307-325.
“Autorità volgare e creazione del canone tra Aï faus ris e il De vulgari eloquentia,” Medioevo Letterario d'Italia 16 (2019): 21-44.
“Materiality and Textuality: Editing and Rewriting the Lyric Dante in History.” Bibliotheca Dantesca 2 (2019): 65-83.
“Dioneo lettore di Dante: la tenzone con Forese, le ‘malmaritate’ e l’etica della letteratura.” In Intorno a Boccaccio/Boccaccio e dintorni: atti del Seminario internazionale di studi (Certaldo Alta, Casa di Giovanni Boccaccio, 6-7 settembre 2018), 59-76. Florence: Firenze UP, 2019.
“Boccaccio's Anthologies and the Dawn of Editorial Auctoritas.” Mediaevalia 39 (2018) [special issue Authority and Materiality in the Italian Songbook: From the Medieval Lyric to the Early-Modern Madrigal, ed. O. Holmes, P. Schleuse]: 273-96.
“Dante, la nascita dell’Italia e della letteratura italiana: il racconto delle origini nelle storie della letteratura risorgimentali.” Giornale Storico della Letteratura Italiana 194 n° 647 (2017): 321-59.
“The ‘Dante Canon’: Collecting Dante’s Lyric Poetry in the Fourteenth Century.” Dante Studies 134 (2016): 169-94.
“«Se Laurettam quandam ardentissime demonstrarit amasse…»: l’interpretazione della poesia nell’antologia Chigiana del Boccaccio.” In Antologie d’autore. La tradizione dei florilegi nella letteratura italiana. Atti del Convegno di Roma (Centro Pio Rajna, 27-29/10/2014), ed. E. Malato, A. Mazzucchi, 441-52. Rome: Salerno Editrice, 2016.
“«In persona d’alcuno passionato»: il ‘ritratto d’autore’ nei manoscritti del Filostrato.” Studi sul Boccaccio 41 (2013): 129-54.
“La scrittura di Benvenuto Cellini: tra pluristilismo, espressivismo e realismo.” Filologia e critica 37 (2012): 169-211.
“Su alcuni manoscritti illustrati del Filostrato.” Studi sul Boccaccio 39 (2011): 315-66
https://oxford.academia.edu/LauraBanella
Alyssa Granacki (Duke University) in conversation with Laura Banella (University of Oxford)
Purgatorio 23: Revisiting Dante's Youth: A Literary and Historical Biography
“Canto per Canto: Conversations with Dante in our time” is a collaborative initiative of the Department of Italian Studies and Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò at NYU together with the Dante Society of America
Rai Radio 3, La lingua batte - Tutti pazzi per Dante (17.1.2021)