After completing his first year at Chapman University, Professor Corrado Confalonieri spent part of the summer in Italy, where he combined research, writing, and academic collaboration. During this time, he completed two invited articles: one on Torquato Tasso’s Discorsi dell’arte poetica and Lettere poetiche (1587), forthcoming in Studi giraldiani, a respected venue in Renaissance Studies; and another on the reception of Ariosto and Cervantes in German Idealism and twentieth-century literary theory, to appear in Historias fingidas, a leading journal in Spanish Studies. He also finalized the proofs for two additional articles—one on duels in Gerusalemme liberata, and another on Erich Auerbach’s Mimesis—both expected to be published shortly in Sinestesie and in Polythesis.
A major milestone of the summer was the completion of a new book on Ludovico Ariosto and literary theory. Drawing together revised and expanded essays from recent years, along with new chapters, the volume has been restructured into a unified and coherent project. It will be published by Longo Editore (Ravenna) in the Memoria del Tempo series, which features significant contributions to Medieval and Renaissance studies from scholars affiliated with institutions such as UCLA, Harvard, Notre Dame, 
Northwestern, and IU Bloomington. The title will be announced in early fall.
Reviews of Professor Confalonieri’s previous work also continued to appear. His 2022 book Queste spaziose loggie. Architettura e poetica nella tragedia italiana del Cinquecento (Loffredo, Naples) received renewed attention in Studi e Problemi di Critica Testuale (110, 2025), in a review by Arianna Capirossi (Università di Bologna), and in Renaissance Quarterly (78.1, 2025), reviewed by James Grantham Turner (UC Berkeley). The most recent issue of Renaissance Quarterly (78.2, 2025) also includes a review authored by Professor Confalonieri of Laura Giannetti’s Food Culture and Literary Imagination in Early Modern Italy: The Renaissance of Taste.
While in Italy, Professor Confalonieri also participated in a workshop at the University of Bologna featuring the Italian translator and publisher of Nobel Prize winner Annie Ernaux. The event offered a timely connection to Andrea Bajani’s L’anniversario, which he introduced at Chapman in April and which was awarded the Premio Strega in early July. Shortly thereafter, he contributed as a respondent in the Forschungskolloquium led by Professor Christian Rivoletti at FAU Erlangen-Nürnbe
rg, continuing his engagement with international academic networks.
In mid-July, together with Gabriele Bucchi (Universität Basel), he launched a call for papers for a special issue of AOQU titled “Epic and Destiny: Freedom and Necessity of Heroic Action between Antiquity and Modernity,” scheduled for publication in December 2026. The theme builds on ideas explored in his 2022 book on Tasso and epic theory (Torquato Tasso e il desiderio di unità, Carocci, 2022) and connects to a new book project currently underway on the concept of epic from Aristotle to the present, also under contract with Carocci.
Professor Confalonieri is also involved in several other collaborative initiatives, including organizing the 67th Annual Conference of the Renaissance Conference of Southern California (RCSC), which will be hosted at Chapman University on November 1, and coordinating sessions for the Renaissance Society of America’s annual meeting in San Francisco (February 2026).
As the fall semester approaches, he is preparing to teach Intermediate Italian 201 and a new first-year seminar on Italian literary ecologies, part of Wilkinson College’s initiative on the environment and building resilient futures. He is also preparing for a series of invited talks in Milan, Naples, and at Chapman University, where he will open the 2025-2026 “Windows to Italy” lecture series on September 17 with a presentation that brings together his research on the Italian Renaissance and interdisciplinary methodology, in alignment with the Ferrucci Institute’s mission.
