Fall 2024 marked the first semester at Chapman University for Corrado Confalonieri, the inaugural Bernardino Telesio Endowed Professor of Italian Studies. Dr. Confalonieri taught an Italian language course, participated in various on-campus activities, and began mentoring a student selected as an Emerging Creative Scholar at the Ferrucci Institute for Italian Experience and Research.
Outside of Chapman, Dr. Confalonieri presented a paper on architecture and time in Torquato Tasso’s “Gerusalemme Liberata” at the annual conference of the Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association (PAMLA) held in Palm Springs (November 7-10). He also worked on various research projects and publications, some of which were released in recent months, with others expected to be published in early 2025.
Since August, he has published an essay in “Studi Culturali” – the most important Italian journal of Cultural Studies, published by Il Mulino – titled “Knowing and Believing: The Flood of the Po River in History, Literature, and Popular Culture.” Additionally, he published an article entitled “Il Gadda di Gifuni tra guerra, storia e filosofia della storia” in the proceedings of a conference held in Naples in 2023, and two essays on Ariosto: one providing an overview of international scholarship dedicated to Orlando Furioso and the other on the Mauriziano, the house of Ariosto’s family in Reggio Emilia, exploring its reality and literary representation. The book that includes this latter essay was presented on Saturday, December 14, at the Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia, at a conference attended by Marco Massari, the Mayor of Reggio Emilia.
Professor Javitch and Professor Confalonieri
Other publications on Tasso and Ariosto are forthcoming. Among these are an essay titled “Torquato Tasso, Ludovico Ariosto, and ‘the small wins’: Chess, Poetry, and Philosophy of History” for “Schifanoia,” the journal of the Istituto di Studi Rinascimentali in Ferrara; a chapter dedicated to irony and harmony in “Orlando Furioso” in a collective volume on Ariosto to be published by Carocci; and a dialogue on Ariosto with Daniel Javitch, Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature at NYU and author of “Proclaiming a Classic: The Canonization of Orlando Furioso,” for a new journal also published by Il Mulino, “ITER” (Immagini e Testi per l’Europa del Rinascimento).
In addition to essays, Dr. Confalonieri was invited to write reviews for “Italian Culture” and “Renaissance Quarterly,” and he has co-edited the review section of “Between,” the journal of the Italian Association for the Theory and Comparative History of Literature, where he is part of the editorial board. In the latest issue of “Between,” Dr. Confalonieri also wrote a review-essay of a book dedicated to the invention of the entrelacement in the Middle Ages (L’invenzione dell’intreccio. La svolta medievale nell’arte narrativa by Claudio Lagomarsini).
At the end of the semester at Chapman, Dr. Confalonieri, together with Emilio Russo, Professor of Italian Literature at the Sapienza Università di Roma, has organized “Trame tassiane. Per uno studio dell’intertestualità nella Gerusalemme liberata,” a conference on intertextuality in Gerusalemme Liberata that brings together several of leading Tasso scholars internationally. The conference will be held in Rome, at the Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo, from Monday, and Dr. Confalonieri will give the inaugural lecture dedicated to intertextuality and literary theory.
In January 2025, before returning to California, Dr. Confalonieri will make a stop in Germany, where he has been invited to give a lecture on Renaissance epic for graduate students at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (January 14) and to present his book Torquato Tasso e il desiderio di unità. La Gerusalemme liberata e una nuova teoria dell’epica at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München in a discussion with Florian Mehltretter (LMU München), Christian Rivoletti (FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg), and Francesco Lucioli (Sapienza Università di Roma) on January 15.
This will be the tenth presentation of the book since its release in September 2022, following those held in Sorrento (December 2022), Sapienza Università di Roma (January 2023), Centro di Studi Tassiani in Bergamo, Universitat de València (March 2023), New York University, Harvard University, University of Genoa, New Books Network Podcast (April 2023), and at the Istituto di Studi Rinascimentali in Ferrara (April 2024).
