Lino Pertile

Lino Pertile is Carl A. Pescosolido Research Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures, Harvard University, and member of the Accademia dei Lincei, Rome.

A graduate of the University of Padua (Italy), Lino Pertile taught Italian Literature in France and Italy (1964-1968), and the United Kingdom (1968-1995), including as Professor of Italian at the University of Edinburgh (1988-1995), before joining Harvard in 1995 as Professor of Italian Literature.

At Harvard, he served as House Master of Eliot House for ten years (2000-2010) and, from 2010 to 2015, as Director of Villa I Tatti, the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies in Florence. 

He has published essays on the French and Italian Renaissance, in particular on Montaigne and French travellers to Italy. His research has focused on the Latin and Italian Middle Ages (Dante), the Renaissance (Bembo and Trifon Gabriele), and 20^th century Italian literature (Pavese and the contemporary novel).  

His books on Dante include the critical edition of the 16^th century commentary Annotationi nel Dante fatte con M. Triphon Gabriele (1993), and the volumes La puttana e il gigante: dal Cantico dei Cantici al Paradiso terrestre di Dante (1998), and La punta del disio. Semantica del desiderio nella Commedia (2005).  He has coedited and contributed to various volumes, including The New Italian Novel (1993, paperback 1998), The Cambridge History of Italian Literature (1996; paperback 1999) and Dante in Context (2015, paperback 2017).  Among his most recent essays, Songs Beyond Mankind: Poetry and the Lager from Dante to Primo Levi (2013) and I disegni di Botticelli per la “Commedia” da Berenson a Yukio Yashiro (2018).  

Keynote Lecture 

To celebrate the Centenary of Italian at Edinburgh, Lino Pertile will deliver the first Peter Brand Lecture:

On Ulysses: in Praise of Literature

Wednesday 26 June 11:00-12:00

50 George Square, Room G.03