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Department of Italian

Lorenzo Dell'Oso

Position: Visiting Researcher

Office: 4040

Email: ldelloso@tcd.ie

Lorenzo is a Research Fellow in Italian at Trinity College Dublin. His current research project “Theology, Aristotelianism, and Poetry in Late-Medieval Italy: Dante’s Intellectual Formation in Florence and Bologna (1283-1307)” aims to provide an extended and interdisciplinary study of knowledge acquisition by lay literates (i.e. those without a formal Latinate education) in the late Middle Ages and, more specifically, to analyse the theological and philosophical formation of Dante Alighieri, one of the most influential literates of the Western world.

Lorenzo holds a BA in Medieval and Modern Literature (2011) and an MA in Modern Philology (Università di Pavia, 2013), a Master’s degree (2015) and a PhD in Italian (University of Notre Dame, 2020). He previously was a Postdoctoral Fellow and Teaching Scholar of Italian at the University of Notre Dame (2020-21). He has been visiting at the University of California at Berkeley (2013) and the University of Cambridge (2018).

Research

Lorenzo’s research covers two specific areas of Italian Studies: Medieval Italian Literature and Early Modern Italian Literature. It is characterized by a strongly interdisciplinary approach (in particular, in-between history of ideas, the history of educational institutions, and history of book) and by a marked interest in Translation Studies and Material Culture Studies.

As regards Italian Medieval Literature, Lorenzo’s research seeks to understand how Late-Medieval Italian writers acquired and disseminated, through their vernacular works, theological and philosophical ideas that were mainly discussed within the institutions of higher learning of the time (universities and advanced conventual schools) where Latin was the language of teaching and communication. His interests have focused on the issue of the intellectual formation of Dante Alighieri – one of the most recent and fruitful fields of Dante studies – both as a layman to whom access to the cultural institutions of the time was very limited and as the founding author of the vernacular as a poetic and scientific language.

At Trinity he will study how Dante, as a layman, engaged with Aristotelian philosophy and theological doctrine in his poetry and prose works while resident in his native Florence (1283-1302) and in the University town of Bologna (1304-1307). The project focuses on (1) the role of local Mendicant convents and the University of Bologna in spreading theology and Aristotelian philosophy to laity; and (2) the ways in which the poet embedded such knowledge into his vernacular works before starting the Comedy (1307). It offers a novel interdisciplinary approach grounded in Material Culture Studies and Intellectual History by adopting tools from Philosophy, Theology, and Literary Studies, in order to explore the transmission of philosophy and theology through editing and analysing neglected manuscripts of public lectures and disputations (c. 1290-1308), held in Florence and Bologna and open to lay literates such as Dante. The purpose is to ‘re-root’ Dante in his historical context and emphasize the role of orality in his intellectual formation, to the detriment of a centuries-old bibliography that describes the poet as an omnivorous reader surrounded by books.

Although the intersection between Medieval Italian literature and History of Ideas constitutes the focus of Lorenzo’s research, he has extended such interests and applied a Material Culture Studies approach to other periods and authors of Italian Literature, from the fourteenth to the eighteenth century, from Giovanni Boccaccio to Giambattista Vico.

Publications

Edited Books

  1. [with Sara Calculli, Alessandra Forte, Paolo Rigo, Lorenzo Trovato], Aggiornamento bibliografico dell’Enciclopedia Dantesca (2006-2021) [‘Bibliographic update of the Dante Encyclopedia’] (2006-2021). Rome: Treccani, 2021.

 

Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles

  1. “Dante, Peter of Trabibus, and the ‘Schools of the Religious Orders’ in Florence” [submitted to Italian Studies in July 2021];
  2. “Su Dante e la dialettica: Convivio II. XIII.11-12 e la logica in Santa Croce,” L’Alighieri. Rassegna dantesca 52 (2018): 37–49;
  3. “Looking at Books, Instead of Reading Them: A Conversation with Randall McLeod,” Tipofilologia. Rivista internazionale di studi filologici e linguistici sui testi a stampa, no. XI (2018): 131–41;
  4. “Dalla filologia alla tipografia: su due varianti sostanziali tra la Dipintura nella ‘Scienza Nuova’ del 1730 e del 1744,” Historia Philosophica. An International Journal XV (2017): 43–62;
  5. “Per la formazione intellettuale di Dante: i cataloghi librari, le tracce testuali, il ‘Trattatello’ di Boccaccio,” Le Tre Corone. Rivista internazionale di studi su Dante, Petrarca, Boccaccio IV (2017): 129–61;
  6. “Un domenicano contro la stampa. Nuove acquisizioni al corpus di Filippo da Strada,” Tipofilologia. Rivista internazionale di studi filologici e linguistici sui testi a stampa VII (2014): 69–102;
  7. “Versi volgari del tardo Quattrocento nel ms. Notre Dame Lat. d. 5,” Studi di Filologia Italiana LXXI (2013): 347–53;
  8. “Reopening a Question of Attribution: Programmatic Notes about Boccaccio and the Translation of Livy,” Heliotropia X, no. 1–2 (2013): 1–16.

 

Book Chapters

  1. “‘Sanctitas animae’ and ‘scientia litterarum humanarum:’ two quodlibeta in Dante’s Florence,” in Quodlibetal Culture in Dante’s Time. Eds. Paola Nasti and William Duba (Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 2022). Accepted;
  2. “‘Oltre la spera che più larga gira.’ Vita nova, Chapter XLI,” in Re-Reading Dante’s Vita Nova, eds. Zygmunt G. Barański, David Bowe, and Heather Webb (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2021). Forthcoming;
  3. “Lettori cinquecenteschi della Commedia. Postille e stampe dantesche nell’Università di Notre Dame,” in Integrazioni all’esegesi dantesca nel cinquecentenario della morte di Bernardo Bembo, ed. Antonio Sorella (Firenze: Cesati, 2021). Forthcoming;
  4. “Tra Bibbia e ‘letteratura di costumanza:’ un’ipotesi su ‘Ecce deus fortior me’ (Vita nova, II.4),” in Dante e la cultura fiorentina. Bono Giamboni, Brunetto Latini e la formazione intellettuale dei laici, eds. Luca Lombardo, Zygmunt G. Barański, and Theodore J. Cachey Jr. (Roma: Salerno, 2019), 221–40;
  5. “Dal Trattatello di Boccaccio alla formazione di Dante: alcune note di lavoro,” in Boccaccio e Dintorni. Atti del seminario internazionale di studi, Certaldo Alta, Casa del Boccaccio, 9 Settembre 2016, ed. Stefano Zamponi (Firenze: Firenze University Press, 2017), 1–12.

 

Dictionary Entries

  1. “Litigamento, Litigante, Litigare, Litigatrice, Litigazione, Litigio, Litigioso, Litigoso, Longitudine, Magnanimamente, Magnanimità, Magnanimo, Magnanimosità, Mansione, Scirocco,” in Tesoro della Lingua Italiana delle Origini (TLIO), 2016;
  2. “Feretrio, Feria, Feretro, Gioventa, Gioventate, Gioventù, Gioventudine, Giovenza, Giubilanza, Giubilare, Nugazione, Ondeggiare, Ondeggiamento, Ondeggiante, Ondeggiato, Intorto, Intorcere, Insolcare,” in Tesoro della Lingua Italiana delle Origini (TLIO), 2015;
  3. “Incamminare, Incancellare, Incancellato, Incoccare, Incoccato, Infedele, Infedelmente, Infedeltà, Inserenare, Insinuazione, Insoave, Insopportabile, Insospettire, Intarsiato, Invincibile, Involpire, Invalido, Trono,” in Tesoro della Lingua Italiana delle Origini (TLIO), 2014.

 

In submission/preparation

  1. “‘Un dice che la luna [...] s’interpuose’ (Par XXIX, 97-98): una disputa astronomica nella Firenze di Dante (con una nota sulla diffusione locale del pensiero astronomico)” [to be submitted to L’Alighieri. Rassegna dantesca (2022)];
  2. “‘Follow the Quotation:’ Theology and Aristotelianism in Dante’s Pre-exile Works [to be submitted to Speculum, 2022];
  3. “’Disputazioni delli filosofanti.’ Nota su un passo dibattuto” [to be submitted to Dante e Bologna. Eds. Franziska Meier and Armando Antonelli (2022)].
  4. “Social Realism, Politics, Crisis: the case of Fellini’s I vitelloni” [to be submitted to The Italianist. Film issue, 2022];
  5. “Reading and Spreading Aristotle in Dante’s Florence: the case of MS Laur. Pluteo 6 sin. 10” [to be submitted to Medievalia, 2022];
  6. “Inferno 28: a biblical Mohammed” [to be submitted to Dante studies, 2022]
  7. “Islam and Islamic texts in Dante’s Florence: the case of Contra legem Sarracenorum by Riccoldo da Montecroce” [to be submitted to Annali d’italianistica, 2022]
  8. I Quodlibeta di Pietro delle Travi a Santa Croce (1295-1296). Eds. L.D. and Gianfranco Fioravanti (2023).