Professor Anna Pegoretti

Trinity Hall
  • Professor of Medieval Italian Literature and Culture

Contact

Location

  • Trinity Hall, Trinity Lane, CB2 1TJ

About

Anna Pegoretti (PhD Pisa, 2009) works on Italian medieval literature, with a specialization in Dante studies. She is the author of Dal “lito diserto” al giardino. La costruzione del paesaggio nel ‘Purgatorio’ di Dante (Bononia University Press, 2007); Indagine su un codice dantesco. La ‘Commedia’ Egerton 943 della British Library (Felici, 2014), devoted to the earliest entirely illuminated manuscript of Dante’s poem, MS Egerton 943 housed at the British Library; Dante a Trento! Usi e abusi di una retorica nazionale (1890-1921) (Castelvecchi, 2022), examining the peculiar history of the Dante monument in Trento, inaugurated in 1896 while the region was under Austria-Hungary’s rule.

She has taught at Roma Tre University for several years and served as a Visiting Professor at the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa in 2021. She has also been a Notre Dame Rome Associate Fellow (2023–2025). She is a co-editor of the leading international journal of Dante studies L’Alighieri.

She has collaborated with the science-theatre festival Teatro della Meraviglia in Trento and has been a guest on the Italian national radio Rai Radio 3. She also collaborates with the leading Italian publishing house Mondadori Scuola.  

Teaching interests: 

Prof. Pegoretti teaches topics related to medieval Italian literature and culture across various papers for the Italian Section and for the MPhil in Literature, Culture and Thought. She offers supervision across a range of topics related to literature and culture in 13th–14th century Italy, with special attention to Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, and Franciscan literature.

Research

Research interests: 

  • Dante studies (including reception studies)
  • Franciscan studies
  • literature and the history of ideas 
  • literature and late medieval education
  • manuscript textual culture
  • interplay between words and images
  • Boccaccio studies
  • Literary geography  

Recent research projects: 

Her current research focuses primarily on Dante’s theological and philosophical culture, and on his intellectual formation in relation to the educational practices and institutions of his time, with special attention to the schools of the Franciscan friars. She has been a co-investigator of a major research project titled Books and Readers in Florence from the 13th to the 15th Century: The Library of Santa Croce, co-led by a network of Italian universities.

She is also involved in the development of a digital encyclopedia of the Decameron (PI Prof. Maurizio Fiorilla, Roma Tre University), with special attention to geography in Boccaccio’s masterpiece.

Published works: 

Select Published works

2024. Now Feed Yourself: Anglo-American and Italian Scholarship on Dante, ed. by T.J.Cachey jr., Z.G. Barański, and A. Pegoretti, Italian Perspectives, 63 (Oxford, Legenda – Modern Humanities Research Association), pp. 15–44.

2024. ‘Novità da Santa Croce’, in Letture classensi, 52. Dante lettore, ed. by S. Nobili (Ravenna: Longo), pp. 15–35.

2024. ‘Automi, simulacri, pesi morti: antropologie disfunzionali tra Cavalcanti e Dante’, in La “compiuta gioia”. Dante e la filosofia, ed. by L. Bianchi, S. Pelizzari, and A. Tabarroni (Ravenna: Longo), pp. 33–59.

2022. Forum ‘Dante and Cosmology’, coordinated by Theodore J. Cachey jr., Anna Pegoretti, Chiara Sbordoni, Dante Studies, 140, 135-265.

2022. Dante a Trento! Usi e abusi di una retorica nazionale (1890-1921) (Roma: Castelvecchi).

2022. ‘La pratica della disputa nella biblioteca e nell’esperienza di Dante’, in La biblioteca di Dante. Atti del Convegno (Roma, 7-9 ottobre 2021), Atti dei Convegni Lincei, 345 (Roma: Bardi edizioni), 2022, pp. 423–59.

2019. ‘Il curriculum del poeta-teologo: Boccaccio e il viaggio di Dante a Parigi’, Studi sul Boccaccio, 47, 129–58.

2018. ‘Leonardo e Dante. Appunti per una ricerca inevitabile’, in Da Dante a Berenson: sette secoli tra parole e immagini. Omaggio a Lucia Battaglia Ricci, ed. by A. Pegoretti, and C. Balbarini (Ravenna: Longo), pp. 197–219.

2018. ‘Early Reception until 1481’, in Companion to Dante’s Commedia, ed. by Z.G. Barański, and Simon Gilson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 245–58.

2017. ‘“Nelle scuole delli religiosi”: materiali per Santa Croce nell’età di Dante’, L’Alighieri, n.s., 50, 5–55.

2016. ‘Dismembered Voices and Acoustic Memories: Dante in Giulio Cesare Croce’, Italian Studies, 71.2, 76–88.

2015, ‘Filosofanti’, Le tre corone. Rivista internazionale di studi su Dante, Petrarca, Boccaccio, 2, 11–70.

2014. Indagine su un codice dantesco. La ‘Commedia’ Egerton 943 della British Library, (Ghezzano (Pisa): Felici).

2011. ‘“Di che paese se’ tu di ponente?” Cartografie boccacciane’, Studi sul Boccaccio, 39, 83–113.

2007. Dal “lito diserto” al giardino. La costruzione del paesaggio nel ‘Purgatorio’ di Dante (Bologna, Bononia University Press).

Teaching and supervision

Supervisor of: 

Thomas Godfrey

Course contact for: 

IT1/ITA3: Introduction to Italian Language: Texts and Contexts

IT4: Autobiography and Self-Representation in Italian Culture

IT7: Dante and the Culture of his Age

IT9: Text and Image