Tra Amici:
A Symposium in Honor of Giuseppe Mazzotta
March 27 – 30, 2008
The University of Mary Washington
Fredericksburg, Va
Acknowledgements:
Special thanks to the financial support from
Bob and Suzy Pence
Pence-Friedel Developers, Inc.
Washington, D.C.
Karl and Audrey White
White Family Brands
Fredericksburg, Va
Richard V. Hurley, President
University of Mary Washington
Simpson Chair in Engish, Simpson Program in Medieval Studies, University of Mary Washington.
Professor Millicent Marcus, Professor of Italian and Chair, Department of Italian Language and Literature, Yale University.
Associate Professor Santa Casciani, Director, The Bishop Anthony M. Pilla Program in Italian American Studies, John Carroll University.
Professor Albert R. Ascoli, Terrill Distinguished Professor in Italian Studies, University of California, Berkeley.
Professor Theodore Cachey and The William and Katherine Devers Program in Dante Studies, the University of Notre Dame.
Also special thanks to my assistant, Mrs. Lula Fasold, to my colleagues, especially F. Gregory Stewart, Maya Mathur, Federico Schneider, and Angela Gosetti-Murray John, and to my students, Virginia L. Bartlett, Sarah Lyon, Stone Ferrell, Ben Vigeant, Katie Lawrence, Tally Botzer, Tyler Babbie, Joey Bersack, and my long suffering son, Joe.
Program
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Registration: Hilton Garden Inn
Reception, 6:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m
Ridderhoff Martin Gallery, University of Mary Washington
Informal dinner arrangements will be available after the reception. Vans will leave the hotel at approximately 5:50 to bring conferees to campus.
Friday, March 28, 2008
8:00 a.m. Motor Coach departs hotels for Belmont
8:15 a.m. Continuing Registration, Belmont
8:00 a.m. – 9:00 a.m. Coffee and Continental Breakfast, Belmont
9:00 a.m. – 10:00 a.m.
Philosophy, Fortune, and Rhetoric
Session Chair: Teresa Kennedy, University of Mary Washington
Robert Pence, Yale University
The Ultimate Anachronism: Dante’s (Cicero’s) Explication of Cicero’s (God’s) Rhetoric in Inferno III
Brenda Wirkus, John Carroll University
Reading Mazzotta Reading Poiesis: In Praise of Making
Winthrop Wetherbee, Cornell University
Phlegyas and Fortune
10:00 a.m. – 10:15 a.m. Coffee Break
10:15 a.m – 11:45 a.m.
Dante
Session Chair: Zyg Baranski, Cambridge University
Victoria Kirkham, University of Pennsylvania
Contrapasso: The Long Wait to Inferno 28
Daniel J. Ransom, University of Oklahoma
Chaucer’s ‘Eyryssh Bestes’
Bernardo Piciché, Virginia Commonwealth University
Roman Law and the Symbology of Cato as a Guardian of Purgatory
Dolores Frese, Notre Dame University
Disclosing the Debt: Chaucer’s Trace of De Vulgari in the First Fabliaux
Zyg Baranski, Cambridge University
Dante’s Forgotten Canzone: “Io sento sì d’Amor la gran possanza”
Laura Benedetti, Georgetown University
Ignazio Silone, Celestine V, and the Temptation of Worldly Power
12:00 p.m. – 1:15 p.m. Lunch, Welcome from Nina Mikhalevsky, Provost, University of Mary Washington
1:30 p.m. – 2:30 p.m.
Vico
Session Chair: Cecilia Miller, Wesleyan University
Massimo Lollini, University of Oregon
On Becoming Human: The Verum Factor Principle and the Common Nature of the Nations in Vico’s New Science
Pina Palma, Southern Connecticut State University
Utopia in Vico and La Capria
Cecilia Miller, Wesleyan University
Vico and Manzoni: Abstract Ideas, Material Culture, and Political Change
Walter Stephens, Johns Hopkins University
Vico, Tasso, and the Old Science
2:30 p.m. – 2:45 p.m. Coffee Break
2:45 p.m. – 4:15 p.m.
Boccaccio and Petrarch
Session Chair: Millicent Marcus, Yale University
Millicent Marcus, Yale University
The Seriousness of Play in Boccaccio’s Decameron
Jason Houston, University of Oklahoma
Cra Corvis: Letting the Crow Caw in the Corbaccio
Angela Capodivacca, Yale University
Petrarch’s Curiosity: The Chiasmus of Familiares I.4 and IV.1
Unn Falkeid, University of Oslo
Petrarch’s Laura and the Critics
Giuseppe Gazzola, Dickinson College
Petrarch and the Worlds of Criticism
4:15 p.m. – 4:30 p.m. Coffee Break
4:30 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.
Classical Images
Session Chair: Angela Gosetti-Murray John, University of Mary Washington
Guy P. Raffa, University of Texas, Austin
A Beautiful Friendship
R. Allen Shoaf, University of Florida
Vergil and Child
Angela Gosetti-Murray John, University of Mary Washington
‘Just as when Bees rest upon various flowers’: Homeric Allusions in Vergil and Dante
Richard Lansing, Brandeis University
Statius’ Homage to Vergil
Michael Farina, Yale University
Un Restauro Letterario: A New Sonnet by Torquato Tasso
6:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m. Tour, Gari Melchers Home and Studio
7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m. Reception
Special thanks to Professor Santa Casciani, Director, The Bishop Anthony M. Pilla Program in Italian American Studies, John Carroll University and Albert R. Ascoli, Terrill Distinguished Professor in Italian Studies, University of California at Berkeley for their generous sponsorship of this reception.
9:00 p.m. Motor Coach returns conferees to hotels
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Combs Hall
University of Mary Washington
8:00 a.m. – 9:00 a.m. Busses available for transportation to campus
8:00 a.m. – 9:00 a.m. Coffee and Continental Breakfast
9:00 a.m. – 10:30 a.m. Combs 139
Dante
Session Chair: Warren Ginsberg, University of Oregon
Gregory Stone, Louisiana State University
Dante as Celestial Soul: The Final Verses of Paradiso in the Light of Avicenna’s Metaphysics
Federico Schneider, University of Mary Washington
Dante’s Divine Melodrama
Virginia Jewiss, Yale University
Dante as Peacemaker: The Heaven of the Moon in a German War Cemetery
Steven Grossvogel, University of Georgia
Justinian’s Jus et Justificatio in Paradiso VI
Mary Ann Carolan, Fairfield University
Counting by Fives: A Literary Reading of Inferno
Warren Ginsberg, University of Oregon
Quiv’era men che notte e men che giorno: Infernal Borderlands
10:30 a.m. – 10:45 a.m. Coffee Break
10:45 a.m. –12:15 p.m. Concurrent Sessions
Renaissance Themes (Combs 237)
Session Chair: Federico Schneider, University of Mary Washington
Erminia Ardissino, Univeristà di Torino
Biblical Literature in the Italian Seicento: Adam in the Baroque
Andrea Moudarres, Yale University
The Giant’s Heel: Political Betrayal in Pulci’s Morgante
Alessandro Polcri, Fordham University
Cosimo De’Medici and Timoteo Maffei: In Defense of a Private Citizen’s Magnificence
James K. Coleman, Yale University
Ficinian Orphism and Solar Imagery in Lorenzo De’Medici’s Selve
Maria Passaro, Central Connecticut State University
Mazzotta’s Theology of the Renaissance
Theology (Combs 139)
Session Chair: Teresa Kennedy, University of Mary Washington
Santa Casciani, John Carroll University
Mary, the Mother of God: the Franciscans, Dante, and Piero della Francesca
Jo Ann Cavallo, Columbia University
Theology and Poetry in Boiardo’s Orlando Innamorato: Agricane’s Conversion
Christian Moevs, Notre Dame University
God Alone Surpasses the Soul: Dante and Augustine’s De Quantitate Animae
Alfredo Luzi, Universitá di Macerata
Parola e Fede nel Libro di Ipazia di Mario Luzi
Susanna Barsella, Fordham University
Angels and Creation in Paradiso XXIX
Risa Sodi, Yale University
La Terza Via: Dante and Primo Levi
12:30 p.m. – 1:30 p.m. Lunch, Faculty Dining Room, Seacobeck Hall
1:30 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.
Art, Music, and the World (Combs 139)
Session Chair: Arelle Saiber, Bowdoin University
Deborah Parker, University of Virginia
A Remarkable Invenzione: Vasari’s Portrait of Six Tuscan Poets
Arielle Saiber, Bowdoin University
Two Contemporary Illustrators of Dante’s Commedia: Paul Laffoley and Rafael Kayanan
Francesca Seaman, DePauw University
Echo’s Voice: On the Spiritual Aspect of Expression
Daniela Bini, University of Texas, Austin
Leopardi and Music
Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria, Yale University
Dante in Carpentier
Christopher Kleinhenz, University of Wisconsin, Madison
The Bird’s Eye View: Dante’s Use of Perspective
3:00 p.m. – 3:15 p.m. Coffee Break
3:15 p.m. – 4:15 p.m.
Poetics and Critics
Session Chair: Brenda D. Schildgen, University of California, Davis
Filippo Naitana, University of Oklahoma
Due Saggi Danteschi: Mazzotta’s Critical Encylopedia
Jacques Lezra, New York University
The Tongue of Orpheus
Andreas Kablitz, University of Koeln
Dante’s Divine Comedy and the Poetics of Visio Beatificata
4:15 p.m. – 4:30 p.m. Coffee Break
4:30 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.
History and the World
SEssion Chair: Theodore Cachey, University of Notre Dame
Donatella Stocchi-Perucchio, University of Rochester
The Poet and the Emperor: The role of Frederick II in Dante’s Theory of Government
Mary A. Watt, University of Florida
Cosmopoiesis: A Dantean Foundation for Columbus’s New World
Theodore Cachey, University of Notre Dame
Dante’s Cartographic Ethos
Brenda Dean Schildgen, University of California, Davis
Dante in India
Angelo Mazzocco, Mount Holyoke College
Dante, Bruni, and the Issue of the Origin of Mantua
David Wallace, University of Pennsylvania
Italian Places in European Literary History, 1348-1400
6:30 p.m. – 7:45 p.m.
Reception, Brompton, Home of the President of the University of Mary Washington
Special thanks to Richard V. Hurley, President, for sponsoring this reception
8:00 p.m.
Banquet, Rappahannock Ballroom, Alumni Executive Center
Remarks:
Virgil Nemoianu, William J. Bryon Distinguished Professor of Literature and ordinary professor of philosophy, the Catholic University of America
Albert R. Ascoli, Terrill Distinguished Professor of Italian Studies, University of California, Berkeley
The Way of the Worlds: Learning From Mazzotta