Academic Background
Simon Gilson studied Italian and French at Leeds University and took his PhD in Italian Literature at Cambridge University. He taught Italian at Leeds University (1998-99), and then at Warwick University (1999-2017), where he became Professor of Italian (2010-17), and served as Chair of Italian (2006-09), Chair of the Sub-Faculty of Modern Languages (2012-14) and Chair of the Arts Faculty (2015-17). He has also taught at the Universities of Birmingham, Royal Holloway and at Keio University in Tokyo, Japan. He was the joint Senior Editor of the journal Italian Studies (2011-16) and has been an elected council member of the Dante Society of America, Harvard (2005-07). He is currently the General Editor of the monograph series 'Italian Perspectives' (Legenda, 2011-), and a nominated honorary member of the Italian Dante Society in Florence (2008-). He came to Oxford as Agnelli-Serena Professor of Italian in January 2018. He was the Chair of the Society for Italian Studies, the Subject Association for University Teachers of Italian in the United Kingdom and Ireland (2018-24). He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2022.
Teaching
Italian medieval and Renaissance literature and cultural history c. 1250-c.1600.
Research
Simon Gilson’s research is focused on Dante, the reception of Dante (and Boccaccio and Petrarch), and Renaissance Italian literary, cultural and intellectual history. In addition to his publications (listed below), he has been involved in several collaborative funded research projects in the fields of medieval and Renaissance studies, including the recent AHRC-funded collaborative project 'Petrarch Commentary and Exegesis in Renaissance Italy, c. 1450-c.1650' and a current AHRC-funded collaborative project 'Envisioning Dante, c. 1472-c. 1630: Seeing and Reading the Early Printed Page'. From 1 September 2024 to 31 August 2027, he holds a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship for a project entitled Reading, Interpreting and Printing Petrarch in Early Modern Italy, 1470-1650.
Publications:
Monographs
[1] Reading Dante in Renaissance Italy: Florence, Venice, and the ‘Divine Poet’ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018)
[2] Dante and Renaissance Florence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005; paperback 2009); revised Italian version Leggere Dante a Firenze (Rome: Carocci, 2019)
[3] Medieval Optics and Theories of Light in the Works of Dante (Lewiston, Queenston, and Lampeter: Edwin Mellen Press, 2000)
Edited Volumes
[4] Petrarch Commentary and Exegesis in Renaissance Italy and Beyond: Genres, materiality, and reception, ed. with Guyda Armstrong and Federica Pich (Legenda: Oxford, 2023)
[5] Nudity and Folly in Italian Literature from Dante to Leopardi, ed. with Ambra Moroncini (Florence: Cesati, 2022)
[6] Cambridge Companion to Dante’s Comedy, ed. with Zygmunt G. Barański (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019)
[7] Interpreting Aristotle from the Fourteenth to the Seventeenth Centuries, ed. with Luca Bianchi and Jill Kraye (London: Warburg Institute, 2016)
[8] Beyond Catholicism: Heresy, Mysticism and Apocalypse in Italian Culture, ed. with Fabrizio De Donno (New York: Palgrave-MacMillan, 2014)
[9] Science and Literature in Italian Culture from Dante to Calvino, ed. with Pierpaolo Antonello (Oxford: Legenda, 2004)
[10] Text and Performance in Italian Culture: Essays in Honour of Richard Andrews, ed. with Brian Richardson and Catherine Keen (Leeds: SIS, 2004)
Critical Editions and Translations
[11] Benedetto Varchi and Vernacular Aristotelianism. A Critical Edition and English Translation of Aristotelian Logical, Ethical and Natural Philosophical Works: ‘Priora’, ‘Etica’, and ‘Meteora’ with Introduction and Notes, ed. with Dario Brancato. 2 vols. Contract with E. J. Brill projected for publication 2026
Journal Articles
[12] ‘Inferno XVI: From the Circling Sodomites to Geryon’s Cord’, L’Alighieri vol. 61 (2024), 89-107
[13] with Federica Pich, ‘Petrarch Commentary and Exegesis in Renaissance Italy: Introduction’, Italian Studies 75:1 (2020), 4-6
[14] ‘‘Optics in and through Dante: Notes on Visual and Optical Theory in the Lezioni of Cosimo Bartoli and Benedetto Varchi’, Letturatura Italiana Antica. Rivista Annuale di testi e di studi, vol. 20 (2019), 501-16
[15] ‘Sincretismo e scolastica in Dante’, Studi e problemi di critica testuale, vol. 90 (2015), 317-39
[16] ‘“Aristotele fatto volgare” and Dante as “peripatetico” in Sixteenth-Century Italy’, L’Alighieri vol. 39 (2012), 31-63
[17] ‘“La divinità di Dante”: The Problematics of Dante’s Critical Reception between the Fourteenth and the Sixteenth Centuries’, Critica del testo, vol. 14:1 (2011), 580-604
[18] ‘Reading the Convivio from Trecento Florence to Dante’s Cinquecento Commentators’, Italian Studies, vol. 64, no. 2 (2009), 266-95
[19] ‘Notes on the Presence of Boccaccio in Cristoforo Landino’s Comento sopra la Comedia’, Italian Culture 21 (2005) [published 2006], 1-30
[20] ‘Scientific Glosses in Cristoforo Landino’s Comento sopra la Comedia’, Annali d’Italianistica vol. 23 (2005), 31-54
[21] ‘Tradition and Innovation in Cristoforo Landino’s Glosses on Astrology in his Comento sopra la Comedia (1481)’, Italian Studies, vol. 58 (2003), 48-74
[22] ‘Plato, the platonici, and Marsilio Ficino in Cristoforo Landino’s Comento sopra la Comedia’, The Italianist, vol. 23 (2003.i), 5-53
[23] ‘Medieval Magical Lore and Dante’s Commedia: Divination and Demonic Agency’, Dante Studies, vol. 119 (2001) [published 2003], 27-66
[24] ‘Medieval Science in Dante’s Commedia: Past Approaches and Future Directions’, Reading Medieval Studies, vol. 27 (2001), 39-77
[25] ‘Light Reflection, Mirror Metaphors, and Optical Framing in Dante’s Comedy: Precedents and Transformations’, Neophilologus, vol. 83 (1999), 241-52
[26] ‘“Dal Centro al Cerchio”: Paradiso XIV. 1-9’, Italian Studies, vol. 54 (1999), 26-33
[27] ‘Dante and the Science of “Perspective”: A Reappraisal’, Dante Studies, vol. 115 (1997) [published 1999], 185-219; reprinted in Dante the Critical Complex: Dante and Philosophy: Nature, the Cosmos and the Ethical Imperative, ed. by Richard Lansing (London: Routledge, 2003), pp. 305-39
[28] ‘Dante’s Meteorological Optics: Reflection, Refraction, and the Rainbow’, Italian Studies, vol. 52 (1997), 51-62
Book chapters/International conference proceedings
[29] ‘Early Receptions’, in Dante’s ‘Paradiso’: A Reader’s Handbook, ed. by Ronald B. Hertzman and Filippo Gianferrari (London: Routledge, forthcoming)
[30] ‘Dante and Natural Philosophy’, in Dante’s Visions: Natural Philosophy and the Neurosciences in the ‘Divine Comedy’ and Beyond, ed. by Cecilia Panti and Marco Piccolino (London: Routledge, forthcoming)
[31] ‘Commentary and Canonization’, in A History of Italian Poetry: 1200-1600, ed. by Guyda Armstrong, Rhiannon Daniels and Catherine Keen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming)
[32] ‘Declinazioni aristoteliche e platoniche nella tradizione esegetica dantesca (sec. XIV-XVI)’, in La ‘compiuta gioia’. Dante e la filosofia, ed. by Luca Bianchi, Stefano Pelizzari and Andrea Tabarroni (Ravenna: Longo, 2024), pp. 219-44
[33] ‘Dante’s Intellectual Formation: Some Background Notes, Some Problems and Some (Possible) Directions of Research’, in Now Feed Yourself. Anglo-American and Italian Scholarship on Dante, ed. by Zygmunt Barański, Theodore T. Cachey Jnr, and Anna Pegoretti (Oxford: Legenda, 2024), pp. 3-14
[34] ‘Paradiso XXIII’ (in Italian), in Lectura Dantis Bononiensis, ed. by Giuseppe Ledda (Bologna: Bononia University Press, 2022), pp. 87-106
[35] ‘Qualche considerazione su Dante, l’enciclopedismo e Servasanto da Faenza’, in Dante e le enciclopedie medievali. Atti del Convegno internazionale di Studi, Ravenna, novembre 2019, ed. by Giuseppe Ledda (Ravenna: Centro Dantesco dei frati Conventuali, 2021), pp. 33-54
[36] ‘Convivio’, in Dante’s Other Works: Assessments and Interpretations, ed. Zygmunt G. Barański and Theodore J. Cachey Jr (Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 2022), pp. 154-85
[37] ‘Inferno I’ (in Italian), in Voci sull’Inferno di Dante: Viaggio verso il settimo centenario, ed. Maria Antonietta Terzoli and Zygmunt G. Barański (Rome: Carocci, 2021), pp. 81-93
[38] ‘Inferno II’ (in Italian), in Voci sull’Inferno di Dante: Viaggio verso il settimo centenario, ed. Maria Antonietta Terzoli and Zygmunt G. Barański (Rome: Carocci, 2021), pp. 95-107
[39] ‘Notes on the Presence of Petrarch in the Dante Commentaries of Cristoforo Landino (1481) and Trifone Gabriele (1525-27)’, in Dante Beyond Borders: Contexts and Reception, ed. Nick Havely, Jonathan Katz, and Richard Cooper (Oxford: Legenda, 2021), pp. 145-56
[40] ‘Visual Theory’, in The Oxford Companion to Dante, ed. Manuele Gragnolati, Elena Lombardi and Francesca Southerden (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), pp. 242-56
[41] ‘Quarreling over Dante: Revisiting Weinberg on the first phase of the Dante Quarrel and on Sperone Speroni’s Second Discorso sopra Dante’, in Beyond Poetics in the Italian Renaissance: New Directions in Criticism, ed. Bryan Brazeau (London: Bloomberg, 2020), 133-56
[42] ‘Appunti e considerazioni sulle lezioni petrarchesche e dantesche di Benedetto Varchi tenute presso l’Accademia degli Infiammati e l’Accademia Fiorentina’, Schriften des Italien zentrums der Freien Universität Berlin Band 3 (2019), 6-15
[43] ‘Vernacularizing the Latin Boccaccio in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Italy: Notes on Niccolò Liburnio and Giovanni Betussi as volgarizzatori’, in A Renaissance Boccaccio. Essays on the Early Modern Impact of Giovanni Boccaccio and his Works, ed. by David Lummus and Martin Eisner (Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 2019), pp. 151-81
[44] ‘Purgatorio XV’ (in Italian), in Lectura Dantis Bononiensis, ed. by Emilio Pasquini (Bologna: Bononia University Press, 2017), pp. 101-15
[45] ‘Doctrine’, in The Cambridge Companion to the ‘Divine Comedy’, ed. Barański and Gilson, pp. 173-191
[46] ‘La fortuna del Comento landiniano: lettori e commentatori cinquecenteschi’, in Per Cristoforo Landino lettore di Dante. Contesto umanistico, storia tipografica e fortuna del Comento sopra la Comedia. Atti del Convegno internazionale, Firenze, 7-8 novembre 2014, ed. by Paolo Procaccioli and Lorenz Böninger (Florence: Società dantesca italiana, 2017), pp. 173-92
[47] ‘Vernacularizing Meteorology: Benedetto Varchi’s Commento sopra il primo libro delle Meteore d’Aristotile’, in Interpreting Aristotle from the Fourteenth to the Seventeenth Century, ed. by Luca Bianchi, Simon Gilson and Jill Kraye (London: Warburg Institute, 2016), pp. 161-82
[48] ‘Appunti metodologici sulla teologia scolastica in Dante’, in Le teologie di Dante. Atti del Convegno internazionale di Studi, Ravenna, novembre 2013, ed. by Giuseppe Ledda (Ravenna: Centro Dantesco dei frati Conventuali, 2015), pp. 99-116
[49] ‘The Wheeling Sevens: Inferno VII – Purgatorio VII – Paradiso VII’, in Cambridge Vertical Readings in Dante’s Comedy, ed. by George Corbett and Heather Webb (Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2015), pp. 143-60
[50] ‘Modes of Reading in Boccaccio’s Esposizioni sopra la Comedia’, in Interpreting Dante. Essays on the Traditions of Dante Commentary, ed. by Paola Nasti and Claudia Rossignoli (Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 2013), pp. 250-82
[51] ‘Dante and Christian Aristotelianism’, in Reviewing Dante’s Theology, ed. by Claire E. Honess and Matthew Treherne (Berlin: Peter Lang, 2013), pp. 65-110
[52] ‘Divine and Natural Artistry in Dante’s Commedia’, in Art and Nature in Dante, ed. by John C. Barnes (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2013), pp. 153-86
[53] ‘Il viaggio nei commenti danteschi (XV e XVI sec.)’, in Il viaggio e le arti: Il contesto italiano, ed. by Lucia Bertolini and Annalisa Cipollone (Pescara: Edizioni dell’Orso, 2009), pp. 25-48
[54] ‘“Pape Satan, pape Satan aleppe!” (Inferno 7:1) in Dante’s commentators, 1322-1570’, in Nonsense and Other Senses: Regulated Absurdity in Literature, ed. by Elisabetta Tarantino (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2009), pp. 25-54
[55] ‘The Anatomy and Physiology of the Human Body in Dante’s Commedia’, in Dante and the Human Body: Eight Essays, ed. by John C. Barnes and Jennifer Petrie (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2007), pp. 11-42
[56] ‘Dante’s Reception in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Italy’, in Italy's Three Crowns: Reading Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio, ed. by Zygmunt G. Barański and Martin McLaughlin (Oxford: Bodleian Library, 2007), pp. 58-72
[57] ‘Notes on the Presence of Albert the Great in Benvenuto da Imola’s Comentum super Dantis Aldigherij Comoediam’, in Science and Literature in Italian Culture from Dante to Calvino, ed. Antonello and Gilson, pp. 72-92
[58] ‘Rimaneggiamenti danteschi di Aristotele: Gravitas e levitas nella Commedia’, in Le culture di Dante. Studi in onore di Robert Hollander. Atti del quarto Seminario dantesco internazionale, University of Notre Dame (Ind.), USA, 25-27 settembre 2003, ed. by Michelangelo Picone, Theodore J. Cachey Jr. and Margherita Mesirca (Florence: Cesati, 2004), pp. 151-77
Exhibition Catalogues, encyclopedia entries and related media
[59] Looking for Dante. Exploring the ‘Divine Comedy’ in Print from the 15th Century to Today, ed. with Rebecca Bowen and Wuon-Gean Ho (Oxford: Taylor Institute Editions, 2024)
[60] ‘Printing the Divine Comedy’, in Looking for Dante. Exploring the ‘Divine Comedy’ in Print from the 15th Century to Today, ed. with Rebecca Bowen and Wuon-Gean Ho (Oxford: Taylor Institution Library, 2024), pp. 50-67
[61] "E lascia pur grattar dov'è la rogna" (in Italian), in Citar Dante: Espressioni dantesche per l'italiano di oggi, ed. by Irene Chirico, Paolo Dainotti and Marco Galdi (Atene: ETPBooks-Lectura Dantis Metelliana, 2021), 246-247
[62] ‘Dante e la scienza della visione’, in Dall’Inferno all’Empireo: il mondo di Dante tra scienza e poesia. Firenze, Gallerie degli Uffizi, Palazzo Pitti 14 dicembre 2021-6 marzo 2022, ed. by Filippo Camerota (Leghorn: Sillable, 2021), pp. 161-69
[63] two entries in Venezia e Aristotele (ca. 1450-ca. 1600): greco, latino e italiano / Venice and Aristotle (c. 1450–c. 1600): From Greek and Latin to the Vernacular, exhibition catalogue (Venice, Sale Monumentali della Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, 21 April–19 May 2016), ed. by Alessio Cotugno and David A. Lines (Venice: Marcianum Press, 2016),
[64] ‘Marsilio Ficino’, in Encyclopedia of Italian Literary Studies, ed. Gaetana Marrone and Paolo Puppa, 2 vols. (London: Routledge, 2007), II, 719-22
[65] ‘Neoplatonism’, in Encyclopedia of Italian Literary Studies, ed. Gaetana Marrone and Paolo Puppa, 2 vols. (London: Routledge, 2007), II, 1280-83
Interviews
[66] ‘Historicism, Philology and the Text: An Interview with Teodolinda Barolini’, Italian Studies 63/1 (Spring 2008), 141-52
Databases
[67] Collaborator (with David A. Lines and Jill Kraye) to Eugenio Refini, Vernacular Aristotelianism in Renaissance Italy: A Database of Works (first publication, May 2012, http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/ren/projects/vernaculararistotelianism/database/ now reformatted as https://vari.warwick.ac.uk/
[68] Collaborator (with Federica Pich and Guyda Armstrong) to Giacomo Comiati, Lorenzo Sacchini, and Francesco Venturi Petrarch Commentary and Exegesis in Renaissance Italy https://petrarch.mml.ox.ac.uk