Vita
Manuele Gragnolati is Full Professor of Medieval Italian Literature at Sorbonne Université, Associate Director of the ICI Berlin, and Senior Research Fellow at Somerville College, Oxford. He studied Classical Philology, Medieval Studies, and Italian Literature at the Universities of Pavia (BA and MA), Paris IV-Sorbonne (MA) and Columbia in NYC (PhD). Before joining Sorbonne Université, he taught at Dartmouth College from 1999 to 2003 and from 2003 to 2015 at the University of Oxford, where he was Full Professor of Italian Literature.
A significant part of his research, including his first monograph Experiencing the Afterlife: Soul and Body in Dante and Medieval Culture (2005), focuses on Dante and medieval literature and culture, especially on the significance of corporeality in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century eschatology. He is also interested in the concept of linguistic subjectivity from Dante’s Vita Nova to the present, in modern appropriations of medieval texts, and in feminist and queer theory. His second monograph Amor che move: Linguaggio del corpo e forma del desiderio in Dante, Pasolini e Morante (2013), offers a diffractive exploration of body, language, desire in Dante and two authors who have engaged with Dante’s oeuvre in the late twentieth century from a minor, ‘eccentric’ position.
Lyric poetry is another of his interests and in this field he has collaborated on a substantial commentary on Dante’s Rime and published essays on medieval and modern authors as well as the volume Possibilities of Lyric: Reading Petrarch in Dialogue (2020), which he coauthored with Francesca Southerden and which explores the potential of the lyric mode through a comparative reading of Petrarch’s Canzoniere.
Manuele Gragnolati enjoys studying and teaching literature for its critical potential to challenge normative ways of thinking and is particularly interested in texts that propose different figurations of reality, whether in the past or in the present. He believes in an interdisciplinary approach to culture and in collaborating with colleagues with different intellectual histories and backgrounds. An example is the recent Oxford Handbook of Dante (2021), which he co-edited with Elena Lombardi and Francesca Southerden and which includes 45 essays by scholars from all over the world and offers an updated, transnational, and plural take on Dante’s oeuvre. At the ICI Berlin he has run several interdisciplinary projects on Dante, Elsa Morante, Pier Paolo Pasolini, and other topics which have often resulted in collective volumes.
Selected Publications
Books / Edited Volumes
- Openness in Medieval Europe, ed. by Manuele Gragnolati and Almut Suerbaum (Berlin: ICI Berlin Press, 2022) <https://doi.org/10.37050/ci-23>
- The Oxford Handbook of Dante, ed. by Manuele Gragnolati, Elena Lombardi and Francesca Southerden (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021)
- Possibilities of Lyric: Reading Petrarch in Dialogue (Berlin: ICI Berlin Press, 2020), with Francesca Southerden <https://doi.org/10.37050/ci-18>
- ‘Petrolio’ 25 anni dopo. Biopolitica, eros e verità nell’ultimo romanzo di Pier Paolo Pasolini, ed. by Carla Benedetti, Manuele Gragnolati, and Davide Luglio (Macerata, Quodlibet, 2020) <https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvvb7mt6.8>
- Amor che move. Linguaggio del corpo e forma del desiderio in Dante, Pasolini e Morante (Milan: il Saggiatore, 2013)
- The Scandal of Self-Contradiction: Pasolini’s Multistable Subjectivities, Traditions, Geographies, co-ed. with Luca Di Blasi and Christoph F. E. Holzhey (Vienna: Turia + Kant, 2012) <https://doi.org/10.37050/ci-06>
- Metamorphosing Dante: Appropriations, Manipulations and Rewritings in the Twentieth- and Twenty-first Centuries, co-ed. with Fabio Camilletti and Fabian Lampart (Vienna: Turia + Kant, 2011) <https://doi.org/10.25620/ci-02>
- Dante’s Plurilingualism: Authority, Knowledge, Subjectivity, co-ed. with Sara Fortuna and Jürgen Trabant (Oxford: Legenda, 2010)
- Experiencing the Afterlife: Soul and Body in Dante and Medieval Culture (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005)
Articles
- ‘L’estetica queer di Petrolio, il gioco e il paradosso dell’impegno’, in ‘Petrolio’ 25 anni dopo, ed. by Carla Benedetti, Manuele Gragnolati, and Davide Luglio (Macerata: Quodlibet, 2020), pp. 63–77; with Christoph Holzhey <https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvvb7mt6.8>
- ‘Insegnare con un classico. La complessità di Dante e lo spirito critic’, in In cattedra. Il docente universitario in otto autoritratti, ed. by Chiara Cappelletto (Milano: Cortina, 2019), pp. 177–214
- ‘Autobiografia d’autore’, Dante Studies, 136 (2018), p. 143–160; with Elena Lombardi <https://doi.org/10.1353/das.2018.0005>
- ‘Zwischen Unsterblichkeit und Auferstehung: das körperliche Jenseits der Göttlichen Komödie’, Deutsches Dante Jahrbuch, 93 (2018), pp. 56–72 <https://doi.org/10.1515/dante-2018-0004>
- ‘Una performance senza gerarchia: la riscrittura bi-stabile della Vita nova’, in Vita nova. Fiore. Epistola XIII, ed. by Manuele Gragnolati, Luca Carlo Rossi, Paola Allegretti, Natascia Tonelli, and Alberto Casadei (Firenze: SISMEL – Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2018), pp. 67–86
- ‘From Paradox to Exclusivity: Dante’s and Petrarch’s Lyrical Eschatologies’, in The Unity of Knowledge in Pre-modern World: Petrarca and Boccaccio between Middle Ages and Early Renaissance (with Francesca Southerden), ed. by Igor Candido (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2018), pp. 129–52
- ‘Active Passivity? Spinoza in Pasolini’s Porcile‘ (with Christoph F. E. Holzhey), world picture, 10 (2015), pp. 1–10
- ‘Differently Queer: Sexuality and Aesthetics in Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Petrolio and Elsa Morante’s Aracoeli’, in Elsa Morante’s Politics of Writing: Rethinking Subjectivity, History and the Power of Art, ed. by Stefania Lucamante (Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2014), pp. 205–18
- ‘Gluttony and the Anthropology of Pain in Dante’s Inferno and Purgatorio’, in History in the Comic Mode: Medieval Communities and the Matter of Person, ed. by Rachel Fulton and Bruce Holsinger (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), pp. 238–50
Publications
Books / Edited Volumes
- Openness in Medieval Europe, ed. by Manuele Gragnolati and Almut Suerbaum (Berlin: ICI Berlin Press, 2022) <https://doi.org/10.37050/ci-23>
- The Oxford Handbook of Dante, ed. by Manuele Gragnolati, Elena Lombardi and Francesca Southerden (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021)
- Possibilities of Lyric: Reading Petrarch in Dialogue (Berlin: ICI Berlin Press, 2020), with Francesca Southerden <https://doi.org/10.37050/ci-18>
- Passages, seuils, sauts: du dernier cercle de l’Enfer à la première terrasse du Purgatoire (‘Enf.’ XXXII – ‘Purg.’ XII), ed. by Anna Pia Filotico, Manuele Gragnolati, and Philippe Guérin, Chroniques italiennes web, 39 (2020)
- Claude Lefort, Dante’s Modernity: An Introduction to the ‘Monarchia’, with an essay by Judith Revel, ed. by Christiane Frey, Manuele Gragnolati, Christoph F. E. Holzhey, and Arnd Wedemeyer (Berlin: ICI Berlin Press, 2020) <https://doi.org/10.37050/ci-16>
- ‘Petrolio’ 25 anni dopo. Biopolitica, eros e verità nell’ultimo romanzo di Pier Paolo Pasolini, ed. by Carla Benedetti, Manuele Gragnolati, and Davide Luglio (Macerata, Quodlibet, 2020) <https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvvb7mt6.8>
- Vita nova. Fiore. Epistola XIII, ed. by Manuele Gragnolati, Luca Carlo Rossi, Paola Allegretti, Natascia Tonelli, and Alberto Casadei (Firenze: SISMEL – Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2018)
- Aimer ou ne pas aimer: une question, deux textes. Boccace, ‘Elegia di madonna Fiammetta’ et ‘Corbaccio’, ed. by Anna Pia Filotico, Manuele Gragnolati, and Philippe Guerin (Paris: Presses Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2018)
- De/Constituting Wholes: Towards Partiality Without Parts, co-ed. with Christoph F. E. Holzhey (Vienna: Turia + Kant, 2017)
- Pier Paolo Pasolini entre régression et échec, co-ed. with Paolo Desogus, Christoph F. E. Holzhey, and Davide Luglio, (=LaRivista, 4 (2015)) <http://etudesitaliennes.hypotheses.org/5321>
- Amor che move. Linguaggio del corpo e forma del desiderio in Dante, Pasolini e Morante (Milan: il Saggiatore, 2013)
- The Scandal of Self-Contradiction: Pasolini’s Multistable Subjectivities, Traditions, Geographies, co-ed. with Luca Di Blasi and Christoph F. E. Holzhey (Vienna: Turia + Kant, 2012) <https://doi.org/10.37050/ci-06>
- Desire in Dante and the Middle Ages, co-ed. with Tristan Kay, Elena Lombardi, and Francesca Southerden (Oxford: Legenda, 2012)
- Metamorphosing Dante: Appropriations, Manipulations and Rewritings in the Twentieth- and Twenty-first Centuries, co-ed. with Fabio Camilletti and Fabian Lampart (Vienna: Turia + Kant, 2011) <https://doi.org/10.25620/ci-02>
- Dante’s Plurilingualism: Authority, Knowledge, Subjectivity, co-ed. with Sara Fortuna and Jürgen Trabant (Oxford: Legenda, 2010)
- Aspects of the Perfomative in Medieval Culture, co-ed. with Almut Suerbaum (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2010)
- The Power of Disturbance: Elsa Morante’s ‘Aracoeli’, co-ed. with Sara Fortuna (Oxford: Legenda, 2009)
- Dante, Rime giovanili e della ‘Vita Nuova’, ed. by Teodolinda Barolini; with notes by Manuele Gragnolati (Milan: Rizzoli, 2009)
- Il corpo glorioso. Teologie e rappresentazioni della resurrezione, co-ed. with Claudio Bernardi and Carla Bino (Pisa: Giardini, 2006)
- Experiencing the Afterlife: Soul and Body in Dante and Medieval Culture (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005)
- Il corpo passionato, co-ed. with Carla Bino (=Comunicazioni Sociali, n.s., 25.2 (2003))
Articles
- ‘Medieval Openness’, in Opennes in Medieval Europe, ed. by Manuele Gragnolati and Almut Suerbaum (Berlin: ICI Berlin Press, 2022), pp. 1–20; with Almut Suerbaum
- ‘Lyric Poetry’, in A Companion to Dante’s ‘Other’ Works, ed. by Zygmunt Baranski and Theodore Cachey (Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 2022), pp. 1–34
- ‘Dante Unbound: A Vulnerable Life and the Openness of Interpretation’, in The Oxford Handbook of Dante, ed. by Manuele Gragnolati, Elena Lombardi, and Francesca Southerden (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021); with Elena Lombardi and Francesca Southerden
- ‘Dante Unbound: A Vulnerable Life and the Openness of Interpretation’, in The Oxford Handbook of Dante, ed. by Manuele Gragnolati, Elena Lombardi, and Francesca Southerden (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), pp. xxi–xxxiii; with Elena Lombardi and Francesca Southerden
- ‘Eschatological Anthropology’, in The Oxford Handbook of Dante, ed. by Manuele Gragnolati, Elena Lombardi, and Francesca Southerden (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), pp. 447–63
- ‘Volgarizzazione lirica e piacere linguistico in Dante’, in Toscana bilingue (1260–1430). Per una storia sociale del tradurre medievale, ed. by Sara Bischetti, Michele Lodone, Cristiano Lorenzi, and Antonio Montefusco (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2021), pp. 281–96; with Elena Lombardi
- ‘Compulsion, plaisir, regret: volonté et passivité dans trois sonnets de Dante, Pétrarque et Shakespeare’, in Dante et Shakespeare: cosmologie, politique, poétique, ed. by Isabelle Battesti and Pascale Drouet (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2020), pp. 105–23; with Francesca Southerden
- ‘Weathering the Afterlife: The Metereological Psychology of Dante’s Comedia’, in Weathering: Ecologies of Exposure, ed. by Christoph F. E. Holzhey and Arnd Wedemeyer (Berlin: ICI Berlin Press, 2020), pp. 63–91; with Nicolò Crisafi
- ‘Ombre a abbracci: riflessioni sull’inconsistenza in Dante’, in Passages, seuils, sauts: du dernier cercle de l’Enfer à la première terrasse du Purgatoire (‘Enf’ XXXII – ‘Purg.’ XII), ed. by Anna Pia Filotico, Manuele Gragnolati, and Philippe Guérin, Chroniques italiennes web, 35 (2020), pp. 30–43
- ‘L’estetica queer di Petrolio, il gioco e il paradosso dell’impegno’, in ‘Petrolio’ 25 anni dopo, ed. by Carla Benedetti, Manuele Gragnolati, and Davide Luglio (Macerata: Quodlibet, 2020), pp. 63–77; with Christoph Holzhey <https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvvb7mt6.8>
- ‘Insegnare con un classico. La complessità di Dante e lo spirito critic’, in In cattedra. Il docente universitario in otto autoritratti, ed. by Chiara Cappelletto (Milano: Cortina, 2019), pp. 177–214
- ‘Maria Corti, La felicità mentale and the ‘voluptas speculandi’’, Women language Literature in Italy, 1 (2019), pp. 109–121. In Italian as ‘Maria Corti e la voluptas speculandi’, in Le nozze di Mercurio e Filologia. Maestre del testo, dell’immagine, dell’interpretazione tra Ottocento e Novecento, ed. by Alessandro Grilli and Massimo Stella (Pisa: Edizione della Scuola Normale, forthcoming)
- ‘La resuurection charnelle des morts. Contextualiser et diffracter le Paradis de Dante’, Revue des études dantesques, 2 (2018), pp. 65–85
- ‘Autobiografia d’autore’, Dante Studies, 136 (2018), p. 143–160; with Elena Lombardi <https://doi.org/10.1353/das.2018.0005>
- ‘Poetry Without End: Reiterating Desire in Petrarch’s RVF 70 and 23’, California Italian Studies, 8, n. 1 (2018), pp. 1–13; with Francesca Southerden <https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5996x6qn>
- ‘Zwischen Unsterblichkeit und Auferstehung: das körperliche Jenseits der Göttlichen Komödie’, Deutsches Dante Jahrbuch, 93 (2018), pp. 56–72 <https://doi.org/10.1515/dante-2018-0004>
- ‘Petrarca e la forma del desiderio: tra metamorfosi e soggettività ibrida in Rvf 70 e 23’, Per Leggere, 18, n. 35 (2018), pp. 27–41; with Francesca Southerden
- ‘Una performance senza gerarchia: la riscrittura bi-stabile della Vita nova’, in Vita nova. Fiore. Epistola XIII, ed. by Manuele Gragnolati, Luca Carlo Rossi, Paola Allegretti, Natascia Tonelli, and Alberto Casadei (Firenze: SISMEL – Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2018), pp. 67–86
- ‘Without Hierarchy: Diffraction, Performance, and Re-writing as Kippbild in Dante’s Vita nova’, in Renaissance Rewritings, ed. by Irene Fantappiè, Helmut Pfeiffer, and Tobias Roth (Berlin/New York: De Gruyter, 2017), pp. 9–24
- ‘Dalla perdita al possesso. Forme di temporalità nelle epifanie liriche di Cavalcanti, Dante e Petrarca’, Chroniques italiennes web, 32 (2017), pp. 137–54; with Francesca Southerden <http://www.univ-paris3.fr/medias/fichier/gragnolati-southerden_1501152291404.pdf>
- ‘Diffracting Dante’s Paradiso: Transformation, Identity, and the Form of Desire’, in Reception, Translation, and Transformation of Italian Literature, ed. by Brian Richardson, Guido Bonsaver, and Giuseppe Stellardi (Oxford: Legenda, 2017), pp. 352–66
- ‘Beginnings: Constituting Wholes, Haunting, Plasticity’, in De/constituting Wholes: Towards Partiality Without Parts, ed. by Manuele Gragnolati and Christoph Holzhey (Berlin/Vienna: Turia + Kant, 2017), pp. 7–30; with Christoph Holzhey
- ‘From Paradox to Exclusivity: Dante’s and Petrarch’s Lyrical Eschatologies’, in The Unity of Knowledge in Pre-modern World: Petrarca and Boccaccio between Middle Ages and Early Renaissance (with Francesca Southerden), ed. by Igor Candido (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2018), pp. 129–52
- ‘XVI: Politics of Desire’, in Vertical Readings in Dante’s ‘Comedy’: Volume 2, ed. by George Corbett and Heather Webb (Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2016), pp. 101–26 <http://dx.doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0100.06>
- ‘”Dubious Desires”: Mimetic Processes in the Divine Comedy’ (with Heather Webb), in Desire, Deceit and the Novel: René Girard and Literary Criticism, ed. by Pier Paolo Antonello and Heather Webb (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2015), pp. 113–31
- ‘Active Passivity? Spinoza in Pasolini’s Porcile‘ (with Christoph F. E. Holzhey), world picture, 10 (2015), pp. 1–10
- ‘Differently Queer: Sexuality and Aesthetics in Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Petrolio and Elsa Morante’s Aracoeli’, in Elsa Morante’s Politics of Writing: Rethinking Subjectivity, History and the Power of Art, ed. by Stefania Lucamante (Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2014), pp. 205–18
- ‘Résurrection du corps et langage poétique dans le Paradis de Dante’, Revue des études italiennes, 60.3–4 (2014), 29–49.
- ‘Paradiso XIV e il desiderio del corpo’, Studi Danteschi, 78 (2013), pp. 285–309
- ‘Analogy and Difference: Multistable Figures in Pasolini’s Appunti per un’Orestiade africana‘, in The Scandal of Self-Contradiction: Pasolini’s Multistable Subjectivities, Traditions, Geographies, co-ed. with Luca Di Blasi and Christoph F. E. Holzhey (Vienna: Turia + Kant, 2012), pp. 119–33
- ‘Re-writing Dante after Freud and the Shoah: Giorgio Pressburger’s Nel regno oscuro‘, in Metamorphosing Dante: Appropriations, Manipulations and Rewritings in the Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries, co-ed. with Fabio Camilletti and Fabian Lampart (Vienna: Turia und Kant, 2011), pp. 235–50
- ‘(In)Corporeality, Language, Performance from the Vita Nuova to the Commedia‘, in Dante’s Plurilingualism: Authority, Knowledge, Subjectivity, co-ed. with Sara Fortuna and Jürgen Trabant (Oxford: Legenda, 2010), pp. 211–22
- ‘Riscrivere Dante in un’altra lingua. Conversazione con Giorgio Pressburger su Nel regno oscuro‘ (with Emma Bond and Laura Lepschy), in Dante’s Plurilingualism: Authority, Knowledge, Subjectivity, co-ed. with Sara Fortuna and Jürgen Trabant (Oxford: Legenda, 2010), pp. 249–66
- ‘Dante after Wittgenstein: “Aspetto” Language, and Subjectivity from Convivio to Paradiso‘ (with Sara Fortuna), in Dante’s Plurilingualism: Authority, Knowledge, Subjectivity, co-ed. woth Sara Fortuna and Jürgen Trabant (Oxford: Legenda, 2010), pp. 223–48
- ‘Trasformazioni e assenze: la performance della Vita nova e le figure di Dante e Cavalcanti’, L’Alighieri 35 (2010), 5-23 (repr. in Dante the Lyrical and Ethical Poet. Dante etico e lirico, ed. by Zygmunt Baranski and Martin McLaughlin (Oxford: Legenda, 2010), pp. 74–91
- ‘Authorship and Performance in Dante’s Vita nova’, in Aspects of the Perfomative in Medieval Culture, co-ed. with Almut Suerbaum (Berlin: DeGruyter, 2010), pp. 123–40
- ‘Between Affection and Discipline: Exploring Linguistic Tensions from Dante to Aracoeli’ (with Sara Fortuna), in The Power of Disturbance: Elsa Morante’s ‘Aracoeli’, co-ed. with Sara Fortuna (Oxford: Legenda, 2009), pp. 8–19
‘Allattamento e origine del linguaggio tra la Commedia dantesca e Aracoeli di Elsa Morante’ (with Sara Fortuna), in Parole di donne, ed. by Francesca Maria Dovetto (Milano: Aracne, 2009), pp. 271–303 - ‘”Attaccando al suo capezzolo le mie labbra ingorde”: corpo, linguaggio e soggettività da Dante ad Aracoeli di Elsa Morante‘ (with Sara Fortuna), Nuova corrente, 55 (2008), 85–123
- ‘Nostalgia in Heaven: Embraces, Affection and Identity in Dante’s Comedy’, in Dante and the Human Body, ed. by John Barnes and Jennifer Petrie (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2007), pp. 91–111
- ‘Gluttony and the Anthropology of Pain in Dante’s Inferno and Purgatorio’, in History in the Comic Mode: Medieval Communities and the Matter of Person, ed. by Rachel Fulton and Bruce Holsinger (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), pp. 238–50
- ‘La Scrittura rossa, il Purgatorio e la forza del dolore: per un dialogo tra Bonvesin da la Riva e Dante‘, in Dialoghi con Dante. Riscritture e ricodificazioni della Commedia, ed. by Erminia Ardissino and Sabrina Stroppa (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2007), pp. 17–38
- ‘La scrittura, l’amore e la morte. Per una lettura leopardiana dei Dialoghi con Leucò di Pavese’, Testo, 52 (2006), 59–75
- ‘Dolore come gioia. Trasformarsi nel Purgatorio di Dante’ (with Christoph F. E. Holzhey), Psiche, 4 (2003), pp. 111–26
- ‘From Plurality to (Near) Unicity of Forms: Embryology in Purgatorio 25’, in Dante for the New Millennium, ed. by Teodolinda Barolini and Wayne Storey (New York: Fordham University Press, 2003), pp. 192–210
- ‘From Decay to Splendor: Body and Pain in Bonvesin da la Riva’s Book of the Three Scriptures‘, in Last Things: Death and Apocalypse in the Middle Ages, ed. by Caroline Walker Bynum and Paul Freedman (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), pp. 83–97
- ‘Marinetti e la lingua francese alle soglie del Futurismo: l’eclettismo ambiguo de La ville charnelle’, Revue des Études Italiennes, 45.1-2 (1999), 115–32
- ‘Love, Lust and Avarice: Leodilla between Dante and Ovid’, in Fortune and Romance: Boiardo in America, ed. by Jo Ann Cavallo and Charles Ross (Tempe: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1998), pp. 151–74
- ‘Giovanni Pascoli: Varianti “conviviali” (1895-1905)’, Revue des Études Italiennes, 41.1-4 (1995), pp. 133–56