Dr Paolo De Ventura PhD

Department of Modern Languages
Lecturer

Contact details

Address
Ashley Building
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT
UK

I study early Italian literature and the historical evolution of the Italian language. I love Dante and his world, which is the fascinating and complex universe of the art and thought of the European Middle Ages.

Qualifications

  • PhD, Romance Languages and Literatures, Harvard University, 2003
  • MA, Romance Languages and Literatures, Harvard University, 1998
  • Laurea, Lettere e Filosofia, indirizzo Italianistica, Storia della Lingua Italiana, Università di Roma “La Sapienza”, 1993.
  • Diploma, Biblioteconomia, Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana, 1992

Biography

My formation began in Italy (degree in History of the Italian Language from the University of Rome “La Sapienza”, under the guidance of Luca Serianni; diploma in Library Sciences from the Vatican Library), and continued in the USA (graduate courses on Linguistics and Literary Theory at Duquesne and Cornell University). I spent nine years at Harvard University, studying, researching and teaching (excellence in teaching award, 1998-1999-2000), and attaining my M.A. and Ph.D, under the guidance of Prof. Fido and Prof. Pertile, my maestro in the field of Dante studies. I have been working in the Department of Italian Studies at Birmingham since 2004.

Teaching

I teach mostly across the areas of history of the Italian language, sociolinguistics, Dante and the premodern period in general for Italian Studies, European Studies and the Joint Birmingham-Warwick MA. At present, I am supervising the linguistic research of three PhD students.

Postgraduate supervision

Paolo De Ventura's main area of research has revolved around Dante’s Comedy and its Medieval, French, Occitan and Latin context, using a linguistic and philological approach as a privileged standpoint for literary criticism. He is particularly interested in the peculiarity of Medieval language, with its dramatic and performative elements embedded within the written page.

At present, Dr De Ventura is supervising the research of three PhD students in the areas of linguistics and Medieval Studies.


Find out more - our PhD Italian Studies  page has information about doctoral research at the University of Birmingham.

Research

My main area of research has revolved around Dante’s Comedy and its Medieval, French, Occitan and Latin context, using a linguistic and philological approach as a privileged standpoint for literary criticism. I am particularly interested in the peculiarity of Medieval language, with its dramatic and performative elements embedded within the written page.  In my first book, I focused on the close relationship between Dante’s text and the notion of drama and orality typical of the time, using a textual analysis based on diachronic and pragmatic linguistics.  Within this perspective, rather than the initiator of the Italian literature, Dante appears as the arrival point of a number of varied and complex traditions. In this context, performance, music and dramatic representations were intrinsic to vernacular “literature”, which was still developing and not yet classifiable as “national”. I am currently working on the significance of the Old French and Provençal tradition as subtexts for the early Italian literary works, with special attention to the character of Merlin.  Another strand of my current research focuses on the Dantean motifs in the Rossetti family, and on the language of 19th-century Italian writers (in particular, I provided a critical text for the Standard National Edition of the complete works of Luigi Capuana).

Other activities

Aside from linguistics and literature, I have great interest in Medieval and Renaissance music. I would like supervising postgraduate research aiming to focus on the interrelation of language-literature-music in premodern Italy.  I am also interested in the Pre-Raphaelites and the Dantesque influences in the Rossetti circle.

I am a Committee Member of the European Rossetti Centre (Centro Europeo di Studi Rossettiani, Vasto, Italy), and of the  Hilton Shepherd Postgraduate Centre for Medieval Studies (University of Birmingham – Department of English). I am a member of the International Scientific Committee of the academic journal Critica Letteraria, a referee for the Dante Prize, and President of the Dante Alighieri Society of Birmingham.

Publications

Books

  • Maria Francesca Rossetti, Un’ombra di Dante, a cura di Paolo De Ventura [introduction, critical edition and translation], Lanciano: Carabba, 2011.
  • Dramma e dialogo nella Commedia di Dante: Il linguaggio della mimesi per un resoconto dall’aldilà, Napoli: Liguori, 2007.

Articles

  • William Michael Rossetti traduttore dell’Inferno, in Dantis Amor: Atti del Convegno Internazionale [monographic issue of] “Studi Medievali e Moderni, vol. I, 2016 (forthcoming).
  • Dante e Maometto: ragguagli ultimi di una lunga polémica, in Dante: nel 750o anniversario della nascita [monographic issue of] “Critica letteraria”, voll.168-169, 2015, pp. 529-561.
  • “A più latinamente vedere...”gli uccelli cantano latino e Virgilio parla  volgare: il latino in Dante tra polisemia, plurilinguismo e diglossia, in “LATINITAS”, Series Nova, III, MMXV, volumen alterum, pp. 55-87.
  • Dante e l’Islām, dalla polémica Asín Palacios-Gabrieli ad oggi: resoconti e prospettive di una questione ancora aperta, in “Bollettino Dantesco: Per il Settimo Centenario”, n. 4, 2015, pp. 123-157.
  • Cavalcanti e il suono delle penne isbigotite: un (altro) salut  italiano?, in “Studi e problemi di critica testuale”, n. 89, 2014, pp. 9-31. 
  • “Si deve concludere che comedìa non è un titolo per Dante”:ancora sul titolo della Commedia di Dante, in "Studi medievali e moderni", vol. 1/2013, pp. 301-306.
  • Notes on Nature and Art in the Earthly Paradise, in Nature and Art in Dante, edited by Daragh O'Connell and Jennifer Petrie, Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2013, pp. 77-94.
  • Dante e Casella, allusione e performanza, in “Dante: Rivista Internazionale di Studi su Dante Alighieri”, Autunno 2012, pp 43-56.
  • Il Saint Vessel e il vasello del galeotto celestiale, in "Tenzone: Revista de la Asociación Complutense de Dantologìa”. issue n. 13, Autumn 2012, pp. 121-154.
  • Dante, Dupin e l’epistola a Cangrande, in Dante oltre il medioevo, edited by Prof. Vincenzo Placella, Roma: Pioda, 2012, pp. 59-80.
  • Il preludio al Purgatorio: la funzione istituzionale della musica nel canto di Casella, in “Critica letteraria”, anno XL, fasc. I, num. 155, 2012, pp. 1-32.
  • Dante and Islam in Christian-Muslim Relations. A Bibliographical History, (volume 4), Leiden: Brill, 2012, pp. 779-787.
  • Dante tra Cangrande e i falsari: gli ultimi vent’anni dell’Epistola XIII, in Critica Letteraria,anno XL, fasc. I, num. 154, 2012, pp. 3-21.
  • A Shadow of Dante di Maria Francesca Rossetti”, in I Rossetti e l’Italia, a cura di Gianni Oliva e Mirko Menna, Lanciano: Carabba, 2010, pp. 90-112.
  • Maria Francesca Rossetti”, in I Rossetti: Album di famiglia, a cura di Gianni Oliva, Lanciano Carabba, 2010, pp. 70-82.
  • “Dipingere Beatrice: appunti sul linguaggio figurativo nel Paradiso terrestre di Dante”, Studi medievali e moderni, vol. 1, 2007, pp. 15-27.
  • “Alla ricerca di una lingua meno imperfetta: le varianti di Ribrezzo di Capuana”, in Studi linguistici per Luca Serianni, a cura di Valeria della Valle e Pietro Trifone, Roma: Salerno, 2007, pp. 195-207.
  • “Illazioni naturalistiche sui personaggi della Commedia di Dante”, Italian Studies, vol. 61. n.1, Spring 2006, pp. 18-35.
  • “Casanova e Da Ponte a Londra: veneziani di passaggio, avventurieri disonorati”, in Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studi “Londra e i letterati italiani” - Università degli Studi di Chieti “Gabriele D’Annunzio” - 20-23 ottobre 2003, pp. 124-136.
  • “Gabriele Rossetti e il codice di Dante”, in Atti del Convegno Internazionale su Gabriele Rossetti - Università degli Studi di Chieti “Gabriele D’Annunzio”, 29-30 aprile 2004, pp. 124-136.
  • “Il dialogo con il lettore e gli appelli agli ascoltatori nella Commedia”, Dante: Rivista internazionale di studi danteschi, vol. 1, 2004, pp. 64-82.
  • “Il prologo-sprolico di Ruzante: un passe-par-tout per il roesso mondo”, in Studi medievali e moderni, n. 1, 2003, pp. 151-170.
  • “Dramma e deissi nella Commedia”, in Rivista di studi danteschi, vol. 3, 2002, pp. 33-60.
  • “Neologismi e forestierismi nella lingua poetica di Remigio Zena”, in Studi Linguistici Italiani, Autunno-Inverno 1994, pp. 45-67.

Forthcoming

  • Critical edition of the first edition of Capuana’s Ribrezzo, in the second volume of Opera Omnia di Luigi Capuana – Edizione Nazionale delle Opere di Luigi Capuana, Roma: Salerno editrice, forthcoming.

Translations

  • Maria Francesca Rossetti, Un’ombra di Dante, Lanciano: Carabba, 2011 (first translation ever).
  • English Translation of the European Rossetti Center website
  • Chapter “Malattie infettive” in Manuale Merck di Medicina, 12th edition, Roma: Springer, 1995, pp. 7-96.
  • Programme booklets for the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, season 1994.

Reviews

A number of reviews were published in the following journals: Italian Studies and Studi medievali e moderni, Modern Language Review.

View all publications in research portal